Dystopia
by PaxRomaDacia
Summary: Life has never been the same on Earth ever since the invasion. For ten years, the human survivors have struggled to live, ruled over by an alien totalitarian government that abuses their most basic human rights, every day gets worse and worse with new atrocities committed by their so called "legitimate" government. But even in the darkest of days, hope is all you need to survive.
1. Prologue

Authors note: I'm back with a new story… yay. This was actually inspired by my love for the dystopian Half Life 2 setting and my mother's stories of her life under a totalitarian communist government which I won't talk about here because that's a VERY sensitive topic. I know this seems like a short prologue, but I promise to develop the world as it goes on and post a few new chapters in a few days, and explaining everything in one chapter will ruin the cool stuff I'll put later. Be sure to review and PM me if you want to say your opinion on this story or suggest something for the story, hope you guys enjoy.

**Prologue**

**O-O-O**

_Gravity Falls, Oregon, June 27, 2022_

_Ten years ago, this town was once quite peaceful in its time, it may have not been much by appearance but it was special, in the sense that it had a large supernatural presence and hidden secrets kept away from its inhabitants. All kinds of creatures existed in Gravity Falls, whether its gnomes or secret societies or even triangle shaped demons, the town had it all._

_But that was ten years ago. That was during a time where happiness and peace existed. That was before the invasion, before THEY came._

_No one expected it, not even the most brilliant minds on earth could have predicted aliens to arrive on our planet, only loose theories of their existence. But that question was answered with their presence, aliens did in fact exist, and they made first contact with us, humanity, out of everything they could have done, they chose to reveal their existence to us, something that I wish never happened at all._

_The world was stunned, unsure how to react to our new arrivals except with questions. Who were they? What were they? How did they get here? Why did they come here? Was there more out there than just them? What happened next made our curiosity vanish and became replaced with fear._

_Next thing we knew, humanity was dragged into a desperate fight for survival, against a foe that has every advantage over us, firepower, numbers, and especially technology. At first, we kept our hopes up, thinking that we could beat the aliens back and preserve humanity's strength and perseverance of maintaining hope. But every second that went by, we started to realize that we were fighting a war that we already lost._

_When the invasion ended, total victory was achieved by the invaders in a matter of three days, three days was all it took for an entire sentient species to fall, and as soon as they came, most of the alien armada left, leaving a few ships to stay behind to clean up the aftermath._

_So began the occupation of Earth, the beginning of our never ending nightmare._

_Most of our cities have been bombarded to dust by the alien ships alone, nothing but ruins and reminders of a history we will never experience again, while their ground forces landed to exterminate any remaining resisting human forces, sweeping them away like pests, while those who couldn't or wouldn't fight anymore were spared from death, and were to immediately be assimilated into a new totalitarian government the aliens had created for the occupation._

_With most of humanity dead and the rest scattered, the survivors were forced to live in the few cities and towns that remained standing, including Gravity Falls where I'm stuck at, and over the course of these ten years I lived, hope has never been deader._

_But if we're still alive after all these years, then I like to believe that maybe, just maybe, hope is still alive._

_End of Entry._

_-Dipper Pines_

**O-O-O**

Disclaimer: I don't own Gravity Falls or any of its content, bah, blah, blah, you know what I mean lawyers.


	2. Chapter 1

Authors note: Told you I'd post a chapter soon, and this chapter along with the next few other chapters I will make are going to start off slow so I can build up the world. And before you say the characters are not acting like themselves, One, people change when they get older, and two, people especially change when they go through situations like the one I will show you, so if Dipper and Mabel come off as weird, It'll be delved into later on, especially with Grunkle Stan. Please feel free to review and I hope you guys enjoy the new chapter.

**Chapter 1: Morning**

**O-O-O**

Early morning rises on the town of Gravity Falls, signaling another day for the daily lives of its citizens, instead of a blue sky and bright sunny day, it was gray and cloudy, the sun's rays blocked by the clouded sky, barely shining any light on the town as the disease of gloom took over the day, feelings of dullness and depression were common place for its citizens, but the weather made it more so than usual, especially since today was June 27, almost one week after the beginning of summer, yet summer's arrival seemed to be a myth today as the clouds continued to darken the sky, over the once great town of Gravity Falls, or Town OA-243 as the aliens labeled it.

The dark morning would make people want to stay in bed and sleep in for a few extra hours of rest, but not for the citizens of Gravity Falls.

The town's government assigned its human citizens a strict schedule that was constantly reminded to its inhabitants to follow through. Every morning at 7 AM sharp, they must be awake to prepare for their day, after half an hour, citizens must report to their assigned posts for whatever job they are given, 8 AM being the latest they arrive, 2 PM was the best part of the day since citizens were given a break from their duties for rest and lunch, break ended at 3 PM and work continues until their shift ends at 9 PM, all citizens must then be home no later than 10 PM, otherwise they face harsh consequences due to the strict curfew and martial law that's always enforced. From there on, all citizens are expected to repeat the same schedule every day, no delays were tolerated lightly and failure to comply with the given schedule would result in severe punishments.

This was the daily life Dipper Pines lived, the kind of life that he world hear about in the news when reporters talked about dictatorships in other parts of the world, he never paid much attention to those stories and tended to ignore them because of all the dread they could bring just by mentioning it, the thought of living through something like that never crossed his mind, but here he was, under the cruel dictatorship he thought of only in his dreams, with the purpose of controlling everything that it ruled for whatever purpose it had and enforced those rules in every way possible.

Today was no different from every other day, an alarm clock rang next to Dipper, still in bed as he woke up, and slowly extend his hand to turn off the 7 o'clock alarm, not in the mood to get up so soon. Dipper then curled back into the bed sheets and felt movement from where he heard groaning and opened his eyes halfway to see Mabel getting up from the bed he shared with her.

After a morning stretch, Mabel turned to her brother to see him trying to go back to sleep and gently shook him. "Dipper?" She whispered softly. "Wake up."

Dipper just mumbled sleepily and closed his eyes. "Five more minutes."

Dipper had no desire to wake up today, all he wanted to do was sleep in with his t-shirt and boxers, but Mabel wouldn't take that as an answer and got up to walk next to Dipper's side of the bed and yanked the sheets away from her brother, who groaned in frustration.

"Come on, sleepy head. You can't stay there forever." Said Mabel as Dipper laid up from the bed and rubbed his eyes.

Dipper let out a huge yawn. "Believe me, I wish I could." Said Dipper as he looked at Mabel smiling at him

"Come on." Said Mabel walking towards the bedroom door. "You go take a shower first, I'll wake up Grunkle Stan."

Mabel walked out the bedroom, leaving the door open for her brother while she went left across the stairwell to their Grunkle's room.

Dipper was first confused at the door leading to the hallway, but he quickly snapped out of it when realizing that he wasn't living at the Mystery Shack anymore. Instead, he was living in one of the houses in the same neighborhood that he and Mabel went trick or treating during Summerween, one of the many memories that he still treasures during that summer, it just unfortunate that houses don't stay as intact as memories overtime.

The house showed clear signs of decay, with no proper maintenance due to its occupants having no time in their schedule to do any form of major repair. The wallpaper was peeling off from its place, wooden floors tended to creak when walked over, most of the windows were stained so opening them was the only way to see outside properly, though the twin's bedroom window had been shattered with a gaping hole, a closer look and you could see dry but faint bloodstains on the glass edges, as if someone was smashed into it which always disturbed Dipper, even the shack wasn't this run down. But as much as he didn't like change, Dipper learned quick enough to accept his new home or not accept it and take it up to the complaints department, which would most likely result in him being arrested for "disobedience".

It still made Dipper think back to his summer memories, all the good times he used to have before all this happened, before alien invaders decided that it was time to attack his home and drive humanity near to extinction. Dipper quickly snapped out of his trance, realizing that he still had a schedule to follow and reminded himself to take a shower so he wouldn't have to face his sister's wrath.

**O-O-O**

"Grunkle Stan?" Said Mabel knocking on his bedroom door. "We got to-

"I know its seven, I'm not deaf." Replied Stan behind the door, referring to the alarm clock. "I'll be downstairs soon."

"Okay then, just call me if you need anything." Said Mabel as she walked to the bathroom door and patiently waited for her turn.

Mabel wasn't always checking up on her Grunkle like this, she knew that even if he was about ninety years, he could still take care of himself, if he could fight off a horde of zombies with his bare hands then getting up from bed wouldn't be a problem despite his laziness, but ever since the aliens threw her and her family out of the Mystery Shack, her Grunkle hadn't been the same mentally, which was why she kept a closer eye on him.

Stan was grumpier than before, he wouldn't eat as much and had to spoon-feed him a few times, he has trouble sleeping, he would suffer from occasional short term memory loss, and even grew a tendency to pick fights with others, even against the authorities which was the worst part.

Mabel couldn't blame him for that, even though she was usually kind and joyful, which were hard traits to keep nowadays, she secretly wished that the invaders just died horrible deaths for what they did, for all of the horrible things that they did to people who wouldn't listen to them, the excessive cruelty and force for the most minor of offences, the constant feeling of being watched 24/7, the things they did to her Grunkle, and then the fate of her pet pig Waddles, her soul mate, what happened to Waddles was something that scarred her mind.

Mabel snapped out of her dark thoughts when she heard the bathroom door open next to her, seeing Dipper wearing a wrapped towel around him slightly shivering.

"Still no hot water?" Asked Mabel disappointingly as Dipper shook his head in response. "I miss hot showers."

"I'm just glad that it even works." Dipper responded as he stepped out of the door and gestured a wave at the bathroom. "After you."

Mabel just smirked and went inside to share the disappointment of having a cold shower, while Dipper went back to his room to get dressed, closing the door behind him so no one peeks.

He walked towards a wardrobe next to the shattered window to view his clothing options, needless to say, they were very limited. Dipper never thought much of fashion, but he hoped he would have more variety than this, two t-shirts, one dark blue and the other brown, a red hoodie, a single of jeans and pair of socks, and a sweater that his sister knitted for him as a gift a few years ago in the same style as his old pine tree hat, which was also here but was too small for him to wear. He also saw his sister's clothes next to his which consisted of the same except instead of shirts and a hoodie, there were two shirts, one pink and the other yellow, and another sweater she knitted for herself. Dipper just went with the blue shirt and hoodie with the other usual clothing and dressed himself.

After closing the wardrobe, he took a quick glance outside the window, trying to avoid looking at the bloodstains on the glass, to see how the weather was, cloudy and gloomy, which fitted quite well for any day in this town. He could hear the floor squeak outside his bedroom, meaning that his Grunkle was going downstairs to the kitchen, so Dipper followed after the squeaking stopped.

After descending down the stairs, Dipper walked right past the front door towards the kitchen, which looked just as run down and decayed as the rest of the house, it had a kitchen table in the center with three wooden chairs, one by the end next to the fridge and the other two at the left side of the table, which faced the kitchen sink and the only windows in the house that were not stained as badly, though the sight of empty streets with the occasional police patrol, which didn't make the view any better.

Dipper could see Stan at the fridge, wearing a blue jumpsuit which was his work outfit as janitor, searching for anything in the fridge to eat.

"Good morning Stan." Said Dipper, making Stan jolt up in fright and turned to see it was only his great nephew.

"Jeez kid, don't scare me like that." Said Stan still taken back a bit by Dipper's greeting.

Dipper sighed. "Stan, there's no food in the fridge. It doesn't work, remember?"

Stan pondered a few seconds until he replied. "Yeah I knew that, just wanted to make sure."

Dipper knew Stan was lying to him, this kind of thing happens all the time and his Grunkle still denies it. He and his sister knew why he acted like this and just like Mabel, he wanted to forget that happened, but Dipper was always a thinker at heart, and trying to forget what happened to Stan was something he found difficulty with.

"If you want food, it's right here at the table." Said Dipper motioning his head at the three cans of beans at the table.

"Oh… I didn't notice." Said Stan as he sat down at the far end while he grabbed the can. "How did this get here?"

"Soos dropped by yesterday night before curfew. He does this all the time Stan." Said Dipper, a little irritated due to having to go over this with Stan several times.

Stan just ignored his nephew and tried opening the can with his bare hands, knowing Stan wouldn't be able to that, Dipper went over to the counter to get the can opener by the counter and handed it to Stan, who just pushed it away.

"I got it, I got it. I just... need to…" Stan just grunted in frustration while opening the can before he noticed Dipper had the can opener in his hand. "Oh… thanks kid." Said Stan as he grabbed the tool from Dipper, who just went to the kitchen cabinets to set up plates and forks for breakfast.

**O-O-O**

After a few minutes in the shower, Mabel came from downstairs, all dressed up with her sweater, which was hot pink and had a shooting star, her personal favorite style, and saw Dipper and Stan eating the beans that Soos brought last night, who the twins were lucky and thankful to have their friend be their neighbor and scavenger, even though they never asked him to do so, Soos was never one to give up on the twins and refuse to help.

"Beans again?" Asked Mabel as she sat down next to Dipper and ate a spoonful of beans with him.

"Yup." Replied Dipper with his mouth full. "Soos said that most of the food was taken from the market again."

Mabel scoffed. "What'd they say this time? The food poison excuse last year?" She asked.

Dipper swallowed and replied. "No. He told me it was because, and I quote, "New food rationing laws are now in effect due to a lack of supply shipments in the region. All citizens are now required to only take one can per week until the situation is resolved."

Mabel just shook her head in disbelief. "Wow. I mean… wow." It was all Mabel could say.

"They even said thank you to everyone there, as if saying thank you would make us feel better." Dipper then quipped sarcastically. "It's like they're trying to relate to us."

" *Humph* It's not too hard to figure out that the next day, you see those so called "lack of shipments" arrive to town, and think that everyone got fooled so they can horde all the food to themselves. " Said Mabel as she ate the last spoonful on her plate.

"The fucked up part about it all is that they don't even need all that food, but they know that we see the shipments ALWAYS arrive, and they wave all that food to everyone in town, taunting us while they know we starve." Said Dipper as he finished his plate as well. "They never change."

"It's too bad we can't any good changes here, I mean come 'on, who wouldn't want to listen to this." Said Mabel as she pointed her thumbs at herself. "I'm adorable."

"You really are adorable." Agreed Dipper. "But they like to shoot adorable in the face and piss on it for fun, so you're out of luck."

"Well, you never know Dip. There's always someone that likes cute and just bottles it up on the inside. Right Grunkle Stan?" Mabel looked over to see Grunkle Stan, who stopped halfway from eating his food and stared at his plate as if he was in deep thought. "Grunkle Stan?" Asked Mabel more softly.

Stan looked up from his plate to see the twins stare at him, waiting for his response. "Why am I eating beans?" Stan asked as he stared back down at his plate.

"It's your breakfast, Grunkle Stan. Remember from earlier when I was talking about Soos?" Replied Dipper softly as his Grunkle started eating again.

"I knew that."

The twins frowned sadly, realizing that they almost forgot about their Grunkle's short term memory loss, which made them think about the aliens from their conversation, the same ones they just joked about for their cruelty, making anger boil inside the twins, not just against the aliens but at themselves for making jokes like that in front of their Grunkle after what happened to them.

The time for negative thoughts wasn't now though, because a knock at the front door could be heard, making Dipper get up to see who it is. He looked through the peephole of the door, silently hoping it wasn't an early "household inspection", to Dipper's relief, it was only his chubby friend Soos, wearing the same janitor outfit as Stan, meaning that it was almost 7:30 AM and called for Mabel and Stan to get ready to leave. When everyone was ready to leave, even though Mabel insisted Stan should take a quick shower before they left though Dipper stated that there was not much time left, and opened the door to the outside world.

The reality that they feared every day.

**O-O-O**

Disclaimer: I don't own Gravity Falls at all. BUT, I do own the aliens in this story.

See you all then.


	3. Chapter 2

Authors note: Another chapter for you lovely people of the internets. If there's anything to say in this chapter, it would have to be that I'm not the best at describing every single little detail, so if you have trouble picturing what I describe in this chapter with the aliens, the aliens I made here are inspired from the Combine in Half-life 2, except they have their own little twists I gave them so I hope this helps. Other than that, there's A LOT of descriptions for world building so I hope you attempt to enjoy the new chapter, reviews are always appreciated by the way.

P.S. - If you really want to get into the atmosphere, play some tunes from the Half-life 2 soundtrack. You can find them on YouTube and play which one feels appropriate for this chapter.

**Chapter 2: The Usual Day**

**O-O-O**

"Morning Soos." Said the twins to Soos who tipped his hat to them.

"Morining dudes." Soos greeted and then waved to Stan. "Morning Mr. Pines."

Stan just stared at Soos and waved to him, not really acknowledging his presence and started walking off on his own until Soos blocked him.

"Hold on Mister Pines, you can't just go off on your own without me, Mabel's orders." Said Soos while Stan stared at the former handyman blankly before nodding.

All of a sudden, an automated voice could be heard throughout the town.

"THE TIME IS NOW SEVEN THIRTY A.M. ALL CITIZENS ARE REQUIRED TO REPORT TO THEIR POSTS IMMEDIATELY OR FACE SEVERE PENELTYS. THANK YOU."

"Just make sure he doesn't try to get himself in trouble." Said Mabel as Soos saluted to her.

"Yes ma'am." Soos then escorted Stan off the front porch and out on the streets and turned left to where they needed to go to work. "You two be careful out there."

"You too, Soos." Said Mabel as she and her brother waved goodbye.

"Well, what are we waiting for?" Said Mabel as she locked the door behind them and walked off to the streets and turned to the opposite side of Soos and Stan to where they needed to go to work.

**O-O-O**

On the streets of their neighborhood, you could see houses lined up appropriately on the blocks they were on, unmoved over the years but not untouched, their conditions were just as deplorable as the twin's house, some with more shattered mirrors, others with holes on their roofs, even as far as a few houses missing doors, the streets looked like they haven't been given fresh concrete for years and showed cracks, same went for the sidewalk as well, the streetlamps and road signs were starting to rust, it was poverty all around, poverty in the same neighborhood where the twins had their first and last Summerween, no matter how many times they saw this, the twins were still troubled about their neighborhood, which seemed to get worse every day.

The rest of the town was no better, over the past ten years, the once beautiful forests that surrounded the town were gone, all cut down by the aliens to make room for what they wanted to put in the town. The animals that used to live in those forests were gone as well, either they migrated or they were exterminated, with the ordinary rat or raccoon still around in the residential parts of the town, scavenging food from the trash to survive and trying to avoid becoming target practice for the police.

Few alien structures outside the town had been made for the occupying forces, mostly buildings for the alien soldiers and vehicles, like a barracks and depots, and for other services, the aliens repurposed the human made buildings inside the town for whatever purpose they wanted, and even made their own attachments on the building such as security cameras, attached smart locks on the doors, and even speakers for announcements to be made throughout the town.

To contain its residents and to use as checkpoints and guard posts, the aliens had built large, scaling walls that reached more than 25 feet tall, and were placed at the edges of the town to surround it, with watch towers attaching themselves onto the edges of the walls and the walls themselves to the sides of the surrounding buildings, with large gates that would open for alien convoys to enter. Smaller walls had been placed further inside the town to split it in different sectors for the aliens to manage, and had smaller gates for vehicles used to patrol the area, along with smart shields at the ends of the small walls, which acted as doorways for the alien personal while humans were unable to pass through unless the shields were off.

The twins eventually arrived at one of the small walled checkpoints, attached to the last houses at the end of the residential block of their neighborhood, which led to the town square where they needed to be. A security camera above the doorway watched the twins carefully, observing their every movement as the twins waited patiently, and then as expected, two humanoid figures came out of the smart shield gateway to the twins, one as big as the twins and the other bigger.

The small figure had very similar appearances in that of an average human in size and shape, tending to stand as tall as the average human and has similar skeletal structures as well, but had extra features to it such as four fingers instead of five, its head although as big as a human's and round, has a slightly elongated shape, and its body frame seems to be more slender and flexible then a human's, even though they looked like weight as much as a human.

The taller figure shared some similarities like four fingers and skeletal structure, but looked more different then the smaller figure next to it. It was taller and reached a height of 7 feet instead of the average human height, it had a larger and bulkier build and was more muscular, the skull shape even less rounded and is larger, more oval shaped, and longer in length, giving off an even more inhuman appearance than its smaller variant.

Despite their appearances, the only true facts that humans knew about them were that they came from another world, they looked somewhat different than us, the two different appearances of the alien figures suggests that there are more varieties of their kind, the small ones were called Geckens and the large ones Guanians, and the most prominent detail was that their race were known as Slegs, though whatever a Sleg truly looked like was up to imagination, since their true appearances have never been revealed to the humans.

The two Slegs were covered from head to toe, they wore sage green uniforms, along with black tactical military vests on their torso, which covered the ballistic vests they had on, wore black knee and elbow pads, black leather boots, black tactical gloves, and even a black ballistic helmet for their heads and covered their faces with black tactical gas masks, shaped to fit onto their heads with ease despite their skull shape, on their right arms, they wore arm bands labeled "t243:g02", indicating what town and which sector they are assigned to.

It was quite surprising to say the least that the Sleg soldiers looked a lot like human paramilitary, although their armor is deceivingly durable, since the material they use to make their armor is not known to humans, even their gas masks were made with small pieces of the material so they acted as facial armor, and instead of laser weaponry like many alien stereotypes would have, the Slegs have advanced ballistic weaponry along with their advanced ballistic armor, which also had the appearance of human manufactured weaponry.

The smaller Sleg's standard weapon took the combined appearance of an M4-carbine and G36 assault rifle which was equipped with its own scope, the gun was colored mostly black and looked sleeker than and not as bulky as the human weapons, while the larger Sleg's gun is similar except it larger to accommodate the Sleg's size, both Slegs also had their own pistols that were holstered on their waist belts along with flash bang and frag grenades for more extreme situations, and other various tools they needed, including a handheld scanner that the small Sleg took out.

"Citizens, please show your I.D. cards for passage." Ordered the Gecken Sleg, its voice sounded inhuman due to a built-in vocoder in the masks the Slegs wore, giving the Sleg a very machine-like voice, yet you could tell they sounded stern and assertive when they spoke, giving off an intimidating presence.

Wanting to cause no trouble or delay, the twins handed their I.D. cards to the Sleg, who quickly used the scanner on their cards as it made two beeping sounds for each scan.

"Scans cleared. You are approved for entry." Said the Gecken Sleg, which made the larger Sleg signal to the security camera.

The smart shield then disabled itself, and the two Slegs walked towards the gateway, leading the twins past the gateway as it activated after they passed through. As the two Sleg guards returned to their posts close to the gateway, the twins proceeded to walk through the town square, which has definitely changed over the years.

Instead of the bustling social center it once was, it served as a center for propaganda and fear by the established Sleg police force of the planet, the Civil Security Force or the CSF for short, whose main goal is to protect the civilians that live under the government and to enforce the law to keep the peace. The irony of the CSF is that although they do enforce the law, they don't really protect them and instead use the laws implemented by their government to their advantage to keep the population under control. The CSF mostly use psychological tactics and constant surveillance, hence the abundance of cameras and patrols throughout the town, to find, monitor, and arrest citizens who could potentially challenge the status-quo and authority of the Sleg government, even if they just assume that someone has a single thought of defiance, the person will be punished accordingly to whatever judgment an officer makes, which is also taken advantage of said officers so they are allowed to do anything they want to someone.

Oddly enough, the twins felt safer by the heavily armed CSF checkpoint from earlier than in the more urbanized areas of the town, mostly because the gate guards were more bureaucratically inclined to do their duty to just check I.D. cards and were stuck in one place, rather than the CSF officers who are allowed more freedom to roam all over town wherever they please, and do whatever they want to their chosen victims.

The CSF officers had a more simple appearance and wore a lot less gear than the more heavily armed gate guards, they had smaller tactical vests that still covered the ballistic vest underneath their uniforms, they did not have the armor pads on their knees and elbows, the uniforms themselves were black instead of green, and the officers were armed with pistols, which were colored in a lighter shade of black and similar in appearance to a GLOCK pistol, along with batons instead of the assault rifles and grenades the gate guards had. Other than that, the officers had the rest of the same gear, but a different attitude towards everyone else.

Every day, the twins were always on edge when walking through the town square, making sure to keep up their best behavior, hoping that a CSF officer isn't in the mood to fuck with them, and it was only a week ago when an officer came up to them for a "loyalty check", which was just code for do whatever they tell you to do or get beaten to a bloody pulp.

The twins saw the usual at the town square, civilians walking to work, cameras observing their movements, cops either patrolling or just talking to each other at street corners, and the dozens and dozens of propaganda posters posted on the walls of buildings, with pictures of CSF officers saluting and wording on the bottom part of the posters which said "Protect and serve" or "Keeping the peace."

Dipper was about to scoff at the messages of the posters until Mabel nudged him with her elbow, making Dipper turn his head to ask what was wrong until he saw the reason why she did that by looking at her left across the street.

The twins stopped walking to see a scene unfold before them, one of the civilians who was wearing a black hoodie was spray-painting at an alleyway wall, the spray paint was red and the person appeared to be making what looked like a muffin, only one person they knew would make graffiti like that, Robbie.

They knew Robbie was always kind of a douche and a troublemaker, but they thought either he had balls of steel or he was an idiot for defying the authorities, and the twins were surprised at first when he got busted for disobedience, thinking they would never see him again. But the more they saw him, the more they realized that the only reason he hadn't been shot yet was because the CSF officers just liked using him as a punching bag, making him think that not going to prison meant he was some kind of martyr, which was one of the many psychological tactics the CSF used for citizens, making citizens think in their heads that the CSF were weak when in reality, they still had complete authority, and this time was no different when two CSF officers, both Gecken Slegs, walked up to Robbie as he was spray painting.

One of the officers chuckled in amusement at what he saw. "Look at this one." He said to his partner.

The two officers then walked up behind Robbie, making him turn and jump back, not realizing they were behind him.

"How can I help you on this fine day, officers?" Robbie sarcastically remarked.

"Sir, I need you to put your hands behind your head." Ordered an officer, annoyed at Robbie's wise crack.

"Heh. Cutting to the chase already" Robbie remarked again.

"First warning, hands behind your head. Now." Repeated the officer.

"I'm just trying to be artistic, officer. Nothing wrong with that." Said Robbie, further aggravating the officer.

The officer then took out his baton and pointed at Robbie's face. "Last warning. Hands behind your head or I will be forced to take disciplinary actions."

Robbie, underestimating how quick the officer was to his limit, decided to comply and expected to be taken back to his prison cell he grew so fond of so he could get the beatings over with.

"Fine, fine. As long as you-

Before Robbie could even finish his sentence, the officer swung his baton at his head, knocking Robbie down to his side as he felt a sharp pain across his skull, shocked at how soon the officer was to the beating stages, but in his mind, he thought it was for his martyr cause implanted in his mind.

"You can't stop freedom! You'll never-

The officer just continued to beat Robbie, over and over as he brought down sharp pains down, making Robbie yelp in pain each time, while the other officer just watched the beating continue, letting his partner beat the man for his own amusement and was most likely smiling under his mask. When they were done with their "discipline", the officers casually walked away from the scene, but not before giving him a kick at his chest, leaving behind Robbie groaning in pain, battered and bruised all over, with broken ribs and fresh blood dripping from the back of his head, his skull feeling cracked open, and was struggling to get up but fell down every time due to the immense pain he felt, while everyone walked past him, ignoring him or getting insults from passing CSF officers such as "maggot" and "hairless ape", one officer going as far as to partially take off his mask, just to spit on him while Robbie laid on the ground, begging for someone to help him.

As much as they felt sorry for Robbie and wanted to help despite their past, the twins just walked away, acting like nothing ever happened so they wouldn't risk their lives, knowing well that if they were caught, they would not have the same kind of what was considered as "mercy" as Robbie did, having no desire to be arrested, beaten, tortured, and being sent god knows where for "reeducation", just for acting human.

And so they continued walking, walking to work while trying to not feel guilty, that all this was not their concern, that they should just go along with their day, do their shift, and come straight home without any harm done.

It was just another regular day.

**O-O-O**

Disclaimer: I don't own Gravity Falls, but I do own my cruel, fucked up Sleg dictators.


	4. Chapter 3

Authors note: Yay! New chapter guys! *applause*. In all seriousness guys, there's some more explaining here and you'll get to find out why the Slegs are even here in the first place. It's a lot of build up to what I have in store so patience is key guys. Other than that, I hope you enjoy the new chapter.

P.S.- this chapter was a little shorter than I wanted it to be, but that's because the ideas I had for it will be used in the next chapter, so expect action to wait a little longer.

**Chapter 3: This World of Ours**

**O-O-O**

After a few minutes of pretending what they saw earlier never happened for the sake of the CSF, the twins finally arrived at the town square, where they usually part ways for work and meet up when it was time for a break, at the statue of the fake founder of the town, Nathaniel Northwest.

At least where the statue used to be, since the Slegs took it down years ago and replaced it with a tall speaker tower, the main source of daily announcements for the town that repeated in a loop, along with several wires running down from the tower, attached to the tower and main speakers, the wires hanging over the ground across the telephone poles and wires, each wire connected to the smaller speakers posted across the town.

Speaking of the tower, the twins could hear another announcement, much louder this time due to how close they were.

"THE TIME IS NOW SEVEN FIFTY A.M. ALL CITIZENS ARE REQUIRED TO REPORT TO THEIR POSTS IMMEDIATELY OR FACE SEVERE PENELTYS. THANK YOU."

The twin's ears would be ringing by now, but after years of hearing the same messages over and over again, they got used to it.

"Well, got to go to work now." Dipper sighed. "See you at two?"

"When do I not?" Mabel then pulled in her brother, giving him a tight hug. "Just be careful out there, Dip. You know how it's like out there." Mabel said as she put her hands on Dipper's shoulders.

Dipper pulled down her hands gently. "You don't need to worry about me, I'm the one that should worry about you." Said Dipper softly.

Mabel smirked. "I still have that one millimeter, which means the big sister always worries about her little bro." Dipper just smiled and shook his head at the fact that Mabel still used that on him.

The twins then changed to expressionless faces when they saw a CSF officer walk up to them, who heard the commotion from afar.

"Is there a problem here?" Asked the officer demandingly, intimidating the twins with his vocoder voice.

"No. No problem, officer." Replied Dipper politely.

"Good. Now move." Ordered the officer.

The twins complied with the officer's orders despite his attitude, and they gave each other a quick glance as a way of saying goodbye and walked off to where they needed to be, Mabel heading towards the church while Dipper headed off to another gate checkpoint that was connected to some building and the old Gravity Falls police HQ, which oddly enough acted as the CSF's police HQ as well.

**O-O-O**

As Mabel walked inside the church, she couldn't help but feel saddened at the mess she was. The church was one of the least maintained buildings in the town, the wooden floors would not only creak but break easily if you stepped the wrong way, all the benches were gone and have been replaced with old mattresses, each looked like they had been dug out of the trash, many were filled with the sick and dying human residents, and to top it all off, every single window of the church was shattered, most of the glass still on the ground, and there was not a single cross or any form of religion to be seen in the church itself.

That sad sight was due to the orders of Sleg government, one of the first actions they took was declaring state atheism throughout the planet, removing every form of religion that existed, from stealing religious artifacts to even burning down almost all the churches and cathedrals on the planet, and any form of religion that was practiced is considered one of the most offensive crimes to commit, anyone even showing the smallest form of worship to what the Sleg government deemed "False lies spread by false prophets", would be punished with the most severe penalties that could be given, most likely being sent to the rumored reeducation camps that Mabel heard about.

Even though Mabel was never the religious type, she still showed respect to those who follow religion and considering the life she lives now, she wouldn't mind praying. But the church was no longer a place of worship, rather it was a watered down version of a hospital, run only by Mabel and two other people who looked after their patients, though right now she was the only one in church, along with two Guanian guards that kept watch and the dozens of people lying on the mattress.

"_This is going to be a LONG day."_ Thought Mabel as she began tending to the patients as best as she could.

It wasn't going to be easy due to many factors, not just because the church was understaffed, but the most obvious being that Mabel isn't exactly an expert at the medical field, she had some experience with mending minor wounds when she was young, but the people coming in had such severe blunt trauma, bruised black and blue all over, internal bleeding, and even broken bones thanks to police brutality by CSF, that Mabel really had no clue how to properly fix, there was also the fact that the church lacked medical supplies, each year these supplies declined in number when provided, Mabel requested that the church should have more supplies last month, but was denied and given a swift hit to the gut with a baton by CSF officers for "insolence".

There shouldn't even be this many people in the church or even Gravity Falls in general. In recent years, there have been several transfers of citizens arriving at Gravity Falls, due to reasons unknown to the human residents, and have been cramping up the town, while new citizens came in, old ones were moved out, and over the past ten years, almost everyone she knew had been moved to other towns or cities, and since all these new citizens came here not knowing how everything works in different towns, it was causing CSF officers to "catch up on their beating quota" to quote a joke Dipper once said.

Mabel wondered if her brother was alright today, even if he just left a few minutes ago, she still worried about him, she knew how aggressive the CSF were with their policing methods, but she quickly put those thoughts aside when two women came in through the front door, one of them Asian wearing glasses and a green stripped sweater, and the other looked quite large for a women and wore a pink shirt, it was her friends Candy and Grenda.

Mabel was thankful that they were not transferred, but since they were separated in different residential sectors, they never spoke as much to each other like they used to, and when they usually met it was always here, too busy to talk due to offering aid to all the patients, sometimes they hanged out with Dipper when break came, but they usually went back home to check up on their families, who lived in worse residential areas of the town, specifically in the buildings that were repurposed as tenements due to all the new transfers, and CSF tended to crackdown in those tenements more than in household neighborhoods, so Mabel understood their concerns.

"Oh thank goodness you're here." Said Mabel relieved when her friends/coworkers arrived. "I need all the help I can get today."

"We'll do all we can, Mabel." Said Candy, knowing full well that without more medical supplies, some of these people may never even get back up again.

"We're just glad to be here." Said Grenda encouragingly.

Mabel smiled at them before looking over to all the patients she and her friends had to take care of today as Mabel thought to herself again.

"_Definitely going to be a LONG day."_

**O-O-O**

After passing through the checkpoints, Dipper managed to reach his destination, an old warehouse once abandoned by the residents of Gravity Falls, now repurposed by the Slegs to act as storage for whatever supplies they brought, Dipper's task is usually to haul supplies to wherever they needed to be, whether he used forklifts or his bare hands, but he usually used his bare hands not because wanted to, but because he was forced to despite the inefficiency, but the Slegs weren't worried about inefficiency.

They had conquered the entire planet in three days and almost wiped out humanity, not before deciding to enslave whatever was left of the human populace, inefficiency was the last thing on their mind and were more focused on enforcing their police state on humanity rather than get supplies stocked up faster, and terrorizing the populace just to make their boring days a little more interesting is what they rather do because well, it was all that was left to do, sure, there were rumors of human resistance rebelling against the government, but even then the Slegs still had nothing better to do on this planet aside from harvesting whatever resources were left and asserting their dominance over other creatures they deemed inferior rather than complete genocide, everyone wondered why the Slegs even bothered to stay even after all these years.

But while Dipper was walking inside the warehouse, he couldn't help but look at something around the warehouse, something that always grabbed his attention when Mabel wasn't around, something that stuck out in the entire town, something that reminded Dipper of the cruelty, greed, authority, and power the Slegs had, something that made anger, sadness, and fear boil inside him, something that reminded him of horrible memories, this very same thing was the main reason that only Dipper and Mabel, and at one point Stan, knew why the Slegs still stayed.

The portal.

Even though Dipper and Mabel didn't know that much about the portal, mostly since Stan kept it hidden from them until the Slegs came, they found out just enough to know that it was something that could change EVERTHING. Not just the fact that if you used it you'd end up in a different dimension, but with such a device, the understanding of the universe will change completely, the knowledge that could be gained from the portal could be unlimited, the twins were mad at their Grunkle at first, but then the Slegs came and changed everything on earth.

The Slegs just expected to conquer another back water planet to expand their intergalactic empire, Earth was originally supposed to be another outpost for their empire. But when they came to Gravity Falls during the end of their conquest, their plans changed when they discovered the portal hidden under the Mystery Shack.

It wasn't hard for the Slegs to figure out how the portal operated and functioned, thanks to the brutal interrogations on Stan that Dipper never wanted to look back to, but the problem for the Slegs was that this portal's maximum potential hadn't been reached, that it was only made as a gateway for other dimensions, but they saw how powerful it could really be, that it could be improved upon in the right hands, in the hands of the greatest scientists on the Sleg Empire, the portal could be so much more, the possibilities of its are endless, and it is well known that knowledge is power, and with that power, the Sleg Empire could fulfill their greatest desire.

Ascension.

So they tore down the Shack, leaving no trace of its existence and replaced it with what Dipper was seeing now. Instead of the old Shack, the Slegs built the tallest tower that had ever been seen, the Black Citadel, no building made by humans could surpass its height, appearing to reach the clouds themselves, the base of the tower had its own set of walls, the tower was surrounded inside a Sleg military base that was positioned around the tower, with walls surrounding the base itself, the tower being at the center, the tower's function not only served as the main research center of the planet due to the portal, but also the most heavily guarded with constant patrols, soldiers, vehicles, and aircraft alike, guarding the tower perimeter nonstop, making the Black Citadel the most heavily guarded area on Earth.

All Dipper could see was pain and misery from the Black Citadel and just went to work as soon as he heard the announcement for the day.

"THE TIME IS NOW EIGHT A.M. ALL CITIZENS WILL BEGIN WORK IMMEDIATELY. ANY CITIZEN THAT FAILS TO ARRIVE ON TIME WILL FACE SEVERE PENELTIES. THANK YOU.

**O-O-O**

Disclaimer: I do not own Gravity Falls, but I do own the Slegs.


	5. Chapter 4

Authors note: Chapter 4 has arrived, and let me tell you this, it's gonna get pretty dark in this chapter, and a certain scene came out pretty messed up as I was just writing it in my head. Sure it might not be the best description in here, but it's even worse when you picture it and take in the psychological factors as well. Nothing else to say except, I hope you enjoy, but not too much, or I'll send you to Arkham asylum to play cards with the Joker. See ya!

**Chapter 4: Guilt and Loss**

**O-O-O**

The hours seemed to go by slow for the twins, which may be due to the speakers making an announcement every minute, always repeating messages about staying at work, trusting your authorities, avoid trouble, have a nice day, etc. Pretty much the same propaganda that they've heard so many times that you could recite the announcements word to word, exactly what the government wanted, to be remembered by everyone for their messages, no matter if they were true or not, people still listened and remembered and that was all they needed to get in your head.

But all the twins could think of was going home right now, usually they would just work like they did normally, but today wasn't a good day at work for them.

Dipper had a tougher time carrying the supplies this time around, but that was because of how skinny he was, sure he gained some muscle over the years and lifting crates for ten years can do that, but the benefits of natural growth and "exercise", if you want to call it that, were outweighed by Dipper just being skinny genetically and the strict restriction of food for civilians, eating one can of food every week only guarantees a short break from starvation, which has left everyone in the town, including the twins, physically weaker than they should be.

So when Dipper accidently dropped one of the crates he was carrying and almost collapsed from exhaustion, the Guanian guards weren't too happy over it as they walked over to him as he laid on the ground.

"Get up." Sternly ordered one of the guards, as Dipper managed to quickly get up despite his exhaustion.

"I'm sorry sir, I-

The guard interrupted Dipper by hitting him in the gut with the butt of his assault rifle, knocking the breath out of his lungs.

"Next time you fuck up, I'm calling an officer to take care of you." Said the guard as he let Dipper off the hook, which surprised his partner as they turned back to walk to their posts.

"What was that?" Asked his partner curiously, Dipper still able to hear the guards within of earshot.

"I'm not letting an officer take the glory for this one." Replied the other guard, the conversation growing fainter to Dipper as he picked up the crate he dropped and resumed work.

Dipper thought he was extremely lucky after that, usually the guards would have just sent him away just like that, but there has been some recent tension going on within the CSF between the guardsmen and officers.

Even though the guardsman had superior training, equipment, and weaponry over the officers, the problems arose when the officers were tasked with enforcing the law and pretty much dictating whatever they wanted, while the guardsman, who are supposed to be the CSF's version of SWAT, were demoted to being stuck at posts, due to actual Sleg military either busy defending the Black Citadel or busy sweeping the planet for the rumored rebel resistance, not doing anything interesting while the officers got to have all the fun, sometimes even doing the jobs the SWAT were supposed to do, such as breaching buildings to take down suspected dissidents, so SWAT started to become more lenient to citizens who made mistakes, sometimes they would just hit them once in the gut to "motivate" the citizen and be on their way, sometimes the guards would just brush it off completely just to piss off the officers and get them in trouble, which the officers replied to that by gaining enough privileges to enforce the law on the SWAT themselves, which meant the officers could police the police, so tensions were high between the officers and SWAT, but their little feud was far from enough to cause major problems to CSF, since both parties still did their jobs accordingly and efficiently, the feud was almost like an illusion to the CSF.

Dipper was still thankful since he really wasn't a fan of being beaten to death, if it was an officer he pissed off, the situation he had before would have been resolved with a trip to the police station and thrown in a dirty cell, while the cops took turns beating him to a bloody pulp like Robbie. Dipper didn't want to think about Robbie, not because he didn't like him, but because he didn't want to think back to what he just saw happen to Robbie earlier in the morning, it made him worry about Mabel's safety.

He knew Mabel had been affected quite a bit after all these years, first with Grunkle Stan being taken away and interrogated, and after months of his disappearance, he came back a broken man, whatever good was left of him was gone, taken away by the Slegs who put Stan through God know what, and turned him into someone who seemed useless and defenseless, constantly forgetting how to take care of himself one moment and remembering it in the next, that's what made Mabel more of a motherly figure for Dipper and Stan over these years, but the event that really traumatized his sister was Waddles.

Dipper was never much of a pig person, but he loved the little butterball nonetheless, but not like Mabel did. She said it herself, Waddles was her soul mate, and Dipper couldn't argue with that at all, he saw how close they were all the time, so he knew how devastated Mabel would be if anything happened to him, and unfortunately something did happen to him.

Even if it was years ago, he still remembered the whole incident Mabel told him about since he wasn't there to see it, how she was just walking with her pig one day when two Slegs wanted to do another "loyalty check" on her, how they forcefully took Waddles away from her arms as she cried, begging for them to give her pet back, and then what they did to the pig, forcing Mabel to watch as they burned the pig alive and ate his flesh just to nail that image in her head, telling her that this is what will happen to her if she disobeys them, and how she came back home soaked in her own tears, she was never the same again.

Now his sister uses her old happy go lucky personality as a mask, to hide her true feelings, feelings of sadness and depression, it made Dipper feel guilt beyond belief that he wasn't there that one day, and he swore to her that he would always be there for her and never let any more harm come to her again, no matter what.

"_I wonder how she's doing." _Dipper thought to himself as he was lifting more supply crates, hoping that Mabel was having a better day then him, now that the guards were watching him more closely as he still struggled to lift the supplies as the same guard came back to him to give him another hit to the gut. _"Just please be okay."_

Unknown to Dipper and the Slegs however, they were being watched from the distance from the cliffs far across the town, as three figures were observing the town from the distance, laying down in the ground as one of the figures observed the warehouse and saw Dipper in the person's lens of their binoculars.

"Don't you dare touch him, you mother fucker." The figure whispered as it saw Dipper getting hit again, silently infuriating the person.

"You know we can't do anything for him." Whispered another figure next to the one with the binoculars.

"I'm the one leading you, so whatever I say goes. End of discussion." The figure with the binoculars replied, ending the conversation as it signaled the others to move out before whispering silently.

"Hang on Dipper, I'm coming for you."

**O-O-O**

Mabel was stressed.

She was always stressed when dealing with patients without proper medical supplies and experience, but it didn't help that every time she and her co-workers stopped someone from convulsing, someone else needed help and CSF officers would just barge in the church and literally toss out new beating victims from their arms onto the floor, as if they were disposing them in a trash can, sometimes cracking the victim's skulls open when they fell, making their condition worse when they started bleeding on the floor and had to constantly switch between each patient, not to mention all the blood, both fresh and dry, that stained most of the floor and was never cleaned, all while the two guards watching over the church just ignored the commotion and casually spoke to each other about their day, even making a few jokes about the dying victims to pass time, so Mabel was having a REALLY bad day.

As Mabel ran over to help another victim that was bleeding out from his head, she slipped on freshly spilt blood on the floor, falling in front of herself and braced the fall with her hands, her sweater getting stained with the blood.

"Mabel!" Cried out Candy as she went over to help Mabel up. "Are you-?

"I'm fine." Replied Mabel, attempting to keep her cool as she rejected her friend's help and got herself up. "Just go get some more bandages."

Candy nodded and went to get new bandages while Mabel went over to help the patient in need, using the bandages she already had in her hands to wrap his head.

As Mabel was wrapping the man's head, another announcement could be heard.

"THE TIME IS NOW TWO P.M. ALL CITIZENS ARE TEMPORARILY RELIEVED FROM THEIR ACTIVE DUTIES UNTIL THREE P.M. FAILURE TO ARRIVE ON TIME ON THREE P.M. WILL RESULT IN SEVERE PENELTIES. THANK YOU.

Mabel would have been relieved to hear that, but she knew that she had to stay behind to tend to the patients more, but Grenda came up to her.

"Don't worry about them Mabel, we can take care of it." Said Grenda, able to tell from Mabel's face that she was exhausted.

"Really?" Asked Mabel relieved.

"We can take care of everyone here, just go to your brother." Said Candy as she was bandaging up another patient.

Mabel smiled and nodded in thanks to her friends as she prepared to go outside to meet with Dipper at the town square, but as she reached the doors, they were busted open by a CSF officer, who had yet another beating victim who had appeared to have been dragged all the way here.

"You have a live one." Quipped the officer as he threw the man in front of Mabel, who caught him just in time before he completely fell.

When the officer shut the doors behind him, Mabel would have just followed and left to go back to the square, but then Mabel took a quick glance at the CSF's new victim and her eyes widened in shock when she saw who it was, Robbie.

"Oh my god." Mabel gasped as she saw Robbie's condition.

Although she knew he was in bad shape after the CSF officers from earlier beat him, he somehow looked even worse than before as Mabel set him down gently on the floor, since there were to mattresses left available, and called out to her friends for help, forgetting about leaving the church and instead was focused on Robbie.

The most noticeable detail about Robbie was his face, if you could call it that, it looked swelled and bruised black and blue, with multiple lacerations on his body, as if someone ran him over with wheels made of daggers, he groaned in pain from the broken bones he had, not just his ribs but also his arms and legs, some of his bones were even sticking out from his body, Robbie coughed up blood from his mouth, further staining Mabel's sweater with blood as she began trying her best to help him, with Candy giving her the new bandages she asked for.

"Robbie?" Mabel said softly and sternly. "Just look at me Robbie."

"The… the…" Robbie attempted to speak, but Mabel hushed him.

"Sh. don't speak. Just look at me, okay" Said Mabel trying to comfort him. "You'll be fine."

Mabel was lying to herself, she didn't want to believe this was happening, she felt guilt rush through her veins as she fruitlessly attempted to bandage Robbie from bleeding out, but his wounds were too great, there were too many openings and not enough bandages to seal them all, but Mabel still tried anyways, she used every method she could think of for Robbie, but to no avail.

She didn't want to live with guilt again, first with Stan, just letting the Slegs take him away and throw him back out, twisted and broken, unable to bring him back to his old self no matter what she did, then Waddles, her soul mate, letting him get taken from her arms, forced to watch helplessly as the Slegs ate him alive, and now Robbie, who she refused to help on the streets, begging for someone, anyone, for aid, was now right in front of her, lying to him that he would live another day, as he coughed more blood on her, and hot tears began streaking down from his face.

"The… pain!" Robbie cried out, as Mabel franticly tried making a splint for his leg, until realizing that his leg bones were sticking out and dropped the bandages, out of fear that she would make things even worse.

"Listen to me, Robbie. You're going to make it, okay? You can pull through." Mabel franticly said as Robbie gurgled blood, unable to speak any more words while Mabel was on the verge of tears.

Her friends tried to pull her away from the hopleless struggle, but she responded by pushing them away from her.

"Don't you dare touch me!" She screamed out as hot tears poured down her face.

Mabel then turned to the guards, who were this whole time ignoring the events happening before them, as if it were never happening, and begged them to help while Robbie began convulsing.

"Please. We need to help him! He needs help!" Mabel begged to the Guanian guards while she tried holding Robbie down to stop his rapid movements.

"This is your duty, not ours." Responded one of the guards coldly, brushing off Mabel's plea as if it were nothing.

Mabel begged again, "We can save him! Please! Don't do this!" She cried out.

The guard then cocked his gun and pointed at Mabel. "Ask me again." He threatened.

Mabel just went back to Robbie, who was now chocking on his own blood, and turned his head to Mabel and threw up the blood on her, horrifying her but still stayed with him.

"Please...Please." It was all Robbie could say as Mabel began crying profoundly, still not willing to let another lost life be her burden to carry, all because she didn't want help him.

Before Mabel could react, the guard who cocked his weapon pointed at Robbie's face and unloaded two bullets into his skull in front of her, instantly ending his life as the force of the bullets, much stronger than your average bullets due to the size requirement for a Guanian, splattered his brains all over the floor, spilling a red mess on the floor as some of the blood splattered on Mabel's face, who froze in shock and terror at what she just saw.

"He was getting on my nerves." Said the Guanian guard casually before stepping back to the door, leaving Mabel to just stare at the body of yet another life lost.

"Finally, I was getting sick and tired of his whining." Said the other guard, relieved that Robbie was dead.

"Humans. They never want to die clean." Quipped the guard who shot Robbie, making the other chuckle at the sick joke.

Mabel just kept staring at Robbie's corpse, feeling guilt, sadness, and anger all at the same time. Grenda and Candy gravely helped Mabel up as tears dropped down from her blood stain face, and took her away in the church to clean her up. There was only one thing on Mabel's mind now.

Why?

**O-O-O**

Disclaimer: I don't own Gravity Falls, but I do own the Slegs.


	6. Chapter 5

Authors note: Back with another chapter, this time it's going to focus on Dipper and him meeting with an old friend (I wonder who it is? *sarcasm*), again it's another short one as well, my brain can only process so many ideas before frying, and I've got some cool stuff I'm going to put in much later on in this story to spice things up, and the next chapter I post will be VERY important and connects to this chapter and the one before it, and all I'll say about the stuff I'll put much later on is that while the Slegs are the main threat, they've brought some other threats with them that are almost as dangerous as them, and that's the only hint you're getting. Other than that, just enjoy the new chapter.

**Chapter 5: Old friend, New Opportunity**

**O-O-O **

After hours of the usual hard labor, Dipper was finally free to go on break, and it couldn't have come sooner. Dipper had a tougher time with the guards this time around, mostly because he didn't have as much strength this time around, but only eating one can of food each week can do that to people, but Dipper was no exception when it came to work, no excuses were tolerated by the Slegs. Though the guard still didn't want to get an officer for Dipper, the good thing about that is that he won't get arrested for "incompetence", the twist is that the guard just kept beating Dipper over and over until break came, so Dipper wasn't in the greatest shape when break came, being bruised and aching from the pain wasn't new to Dipper, but that didn't mean he got completely used to it, he was lucky he didn't have any broken bones or anything else too serious so he didn't have to go to the "hospital", Mabel would have flipped to see him there in a serious condition like that.

After passing through the last checkpoint, Dipper was close to the town square, managing to not get stopped by a CSF officer to delay him, but before he reached his destination, he heard a loud whisper call out to him.

"Dipper?" Said the hushed voice that somehow knew his name.

He turned to where the voice came from to see an alleyway, complete with trash on the ground and a green dumpster. On one hand, Dipper wanted to check it out to see who called to him, on the other hand, he may finally be going crazy in this hellhole and thought it was a voice in his head, calling him from the dumpster. But curiosity got the better of him and he walked to the alleyway, checking to make sure no cameras or CSF patrols were looking at him, and walked towards the alleyway when he heard the whisper again.

"Who are you?" He asked out curiously.

Suddenly, a pair of hands pulled him behind the side of the dumpster, quickly pulling him to cover which made Dipper close to panicking at the sudden force, he would have begun to struggle to break free from his unknown assailant's grasp until…

"Dipper stop! It's me." Said the voice softly, the same voice he heard before, this time more clearly and recognizable, making Dipper stop his struggle as he saw who it was, someone he never thought he would see again.

"Wendy?" Said a shocked Dipper as he stared at his old friend red head face to face.

"Sup dork?" Said Wendy as she warmly smiled at Dipper.

Dipper could only respond by pulling Wendy into a warm embrace that she gladly returned, he even started to tear up, overcome with happiness of seeing his old friend again, even when the pain from all the bruises kicked in, he ignored it, all that mattered to him right now was that he knew Wendy was back and still alive.

It really had been a long time since Dipper last saw Wendy, the last time he did was eight years ago when she and her family were transferred out of town to somewhere else, he remembered how heartbroken they both were when this happened, how he became depressed for a while after they got separated, always wondering what happened to her and if she was okay, or if she was even alive, it ate him up from the inside not knowing what happened to her, he never forgot about her despite how far away they were from each other, but now she was here, alive and here with him again.

After what seemed like hours, the two pulled away from their embrace as Dipper wiped the tears from his eyes that Wendy noticed.

"Happy to see me, aren't you?" Quipped Wendy, making Dipper chuckle at her wise crack.

"You have no idea." Replied Dipper smiling, glad to see the redhead again.

"I think I do." Wendy quipped again, referring to Dipper tearing up as he wiped the rest of the tears away, calming himself down. "How've you been?" She asked.

"Like everyone else." He replied more seriously. "Tired, hungry, and aching all over, but still breathing."

"Why am I not surprised?" Wendy frowned, knowing that this was not the first time she heard that.

Dipper was about to ask Wendy how she got here before she quickly interrupted him.

"How about your sister? Is she okay?"

Dipper nodded. "Yeah, yeah, she's fine. I was just about to meet her at the square."

"And Soos?" She quickly asked again.

"He's fine too."

"Okay good." Wendy mumbled lowly before asking another question, this time more gently knowing about the subject matter. "How about Stan? Is he getting any better?"

Dipper just shook his head, not wanting to reply about his Grunkle.

"Damn." She mumbled again before poking her head up above the dumpster, checking to see if anyone saw them, and as happy as Dipper was, he was also confused.

While he is overjoyed that Wendy is back, Dipper noticed some strange things about Wendy just by looking at her. Taking a good look at her, he saw that she wore most of her usual style like before, even had some new boots and a new green flannel shirt, but she wasn't wearing her trademark lumberjack hat on her, and she wore what looked like a tactical vest from one of the CSF officers, and even saw a hatchet and a pistol in a holster on her waist belt, which made Dipper wonder about a lot of questions to ask her.

Not only that, but Wendy also seemed to be on edge as if she did something wrong, her eyes were always darting to her every corner, she constantly interrupted Dipper when she knew he would ask questions, as if she was in a hurry, constantly checking behind the dumpster if anyone was watching, hell it was weird that they were even here in the first place, and it just brought up more questions like, Where did she come from? How did she get here? Why was she here in the first place? Is she in real trouble? Etc.

Wendy then noticed Dipper looking at her attire. "Are you checking me out, dude?" She said with a raised eyebrow, making Dipper blush out of embarrassment.

Dipper stammered "N-no, of course not. I'm just curious why you look dressed for a fight."

Wendy just sighed, changing her expression to a more serious tone. "It's a long story. I won't have enough time to tell you now."

"What do you mean by that?" Asked Dipper, now raising his eyebrow. "Because I have this feeling that it means something other than the town schedule."

"Like I said, it's a long story. I'll explain it all when we get out of here."

"Wait, what?" Asked Dipper, shocked at what he just heard. "Did you just say get out of here? Like, out of the town?"

"Why else do you think I'm here? Just to say hi and leave you?" Said Wendy, still keeping her serious but worrying tone. "I'm not doing that to you."

Dipper was just dumbfounded at what was going on, one moment he was happy to see Wendy again after eight years, and now he was talking to her about escaping the town, he didn't know how to feel since this happened so fast, so he didn't respond to Wendy.

Wendy picked up on this and put her hands on Dipper's shoulders to comfort him, knowing how sudden this all happened.

"Look. I know this is happening real fast right now, but I have no choice. I would love to explain everything to you, but I REALLY, don't have enough time, hell, I shouldn't even be here right now." Wendy then poked her head up, only to quickly put it down when she saw a CSF officer walk past. "Shit." She whispered to herself and waited until the officer left to continue.

"I get that we just met each other again after eight years, and I get that I'm saying something that seems out of the blue and insane, but you have to trust me on this, okay?" Wendy said, trying to help Dipper understand.

"Wendy, I… I don't know." Dipper said, still not sure what to think about this.

"How would you not know? I'm not just giving you, but Mabel, Stan, and Soos as well, a chance to finally get away from all this." Wendy referring to the Sleg occupation. "Do you really want to stay in this hellhole? After everything that's happened, everything the Slegs have done, you don't know if you want to be free?"

Dipper didn't know how to answer that question.

The obvious choice would be yes, and he did want to say yes.

He wanted to leave ever since this started, all the pain, misery, cruelty can end if he just agreed, and he can get Mabel, Stan, and Soos out of here, out of the Sleg's grasp after ten years of hell, all the beatings, torture, and the constant feeling of being watched, the fear of making one wrong move just to end up entangled in a fate that's possibly worse than death, it could all end by agreeing to leave, he may not know where they'll go, but it would be better than here, that's for sure.

But Dipper also wanted to say no.

He knows how horrible it is to live under a life of oppression and dictatorship, and he did want to leave it behind, but it was only a chance, a very slim chance. He and his loved ones could get killed by the Slegs, knowing how merciless they are to their foes, or even worse they could get caught, the CSF would have him and everyone else under their custody to do god knows what to them, and even if they did escape, they would be on the run, always moving and never resting in one place too long, being pursued by an all-powerful force that will never stop chasing them until their end.

"I… I just don't know." It was all Dipper could say.

Wendy just sighed in response. "Okay. How about this?" Suggested Wendy "You're a smart guy, think it over for a while and when it's time to go home, I'll meet you by your place to talk it over in detail with you and everyone else, okay?"

"Okay." Agreed Dipper as Wendy looked over the dumpster again. "Wait, how do you even know where I live?"

Wendy blinked her eyes rapidly a few times before answering. "Umm… long story."

The conversation was then interrupted by another announcement.

"THE TIME IS NOW TWO TEN P.M. ALL CITIZENS HAVE FIFTY MINUTES BEFORE WORK RESUMES ON THREE P.M. FAILURE TO ARRIVE ON TIME ON THREE P.M. WILL RESULT IN SEVERE PENALTIES. THANK YOU."

"You should get going Dipper, I've held you up long enough." Said Wendy as she looked behind the dumpster again for CSF. "Go meet up with your sister."

Dipper nodded as Wendy let him go and walk away, but not before telling him one last thing.

"Oh, by the way… It's good to see you again." Wendy said smiling, making Dipper smile and nod in agreement before leaving her to sneak out.

_"Mabel isn't going to believe this."_

**O-O-O**

Disclaimer: I don't own Gravity Falls, but I do own the Slegs.


	7. Chapter 6

Authors note: New chapter ahoy! It's been a few days since I've uploaded a new chapter, but that's because of new ideas I'm trying to work out with the story and college work as well, so chapters will come in a bit slower. Good news is that things will get A LOT more exciting now, especially with this chapter. So just sit back and enjoy the new chapter.

P.S: Reviews are always welcome, I always encourage it.

**Chapter 6: No Choice**

**O-O-O**

It had been about forty minutes after Dipper's encounter with Wendy, still thinking about what she had told him, that she could help him and his loved ones free, free from this town, free from the Slegs, and thinking about this alone was frustrating, still torn between freedom and safety, if staying here or escaping would guarantee survival, he wished Mabel were here so he could talk to her about this, but he knew that CSF had the town square completely in their grasp, so talking about escape in the center of CSF propaganda wasn't a good idea, but all Dipper wanted now was Mabel to just be here.

"_What's taking her so long?" _He thought, now getting worried about his sister.

Dipper knew that sometimes Mabel would be a little late to meet up with him, she told him what she does at work, being an amateur nurse at best, only managing to heal minor wounds and yet constantly had to manage patients with more serious wounds, mostly caused by the CSF officers, and even told him about the ones that died, the people who couldn't make it and died in front of Mabel, all because of reasons that could have been easily solved if the government bothered to care, so Dipper could understand well enough how stressful and difficult Mabel's job is, but she never took this long.

And unfortunately for Dipper, another announcement came on.

"THE TIME IS NOW TWO FIFTY. ALL CITIZENS ARE REQUIRED TO RETURN TO THEIR DESIGNATED POSTS OR FACE SEVERE PENELTYS. THANK YOU."

Dipper looked around to check if Mabel was anywhere to be found, yet he could find no trace of her, not at all. Now he was really worried, Mabel would never miss a day to be with him on break, it wasn't like her to do this, he wanted to go check out the church himself before, but he knew how strict the CSF were about a citizen's designated post, and if he tried to go anyways, the officers would just arrest him and charge him with unlawful entry, so he was basically stuck outside until Mabel came out.

An officer then walked up to Dipper. "You. Back to your post." Ordered the officer, making Dipper walk away from the center and go back to the warehouse.

All Dipper could do now is work until it was time to go home at nine, by then Mabel would have to be out, Dipper just hoped she was okay.

**O-O-O**

All Mabel could do is cry.

She just cried to herself for the entire break, all by herself in the back of the church, inside some small room all to herself, crying in the corner of the room, still wearing her sweater covered in dry bloodstains despite Candy and Grenda's best efforts to clean the blood off, she was even in her "sweater town", wanting to ignore everything that just happened for these last ten years, but sweater town wouldn't help her this time, not after what happened with Stan, Waddles, and now Robbie.

Mabel's friends wanted to comfort her, to tell her that everything would be okay, just so she could piece herself back to her normal again, but she ignored them, told them off in a fit of rage and sadness, saying that they didn't understand her and Mabel stormed off to the back, locking herself in this old room just to be alone, having no desire to see anyone at all.

Loud knocks could then be heard from the door, hoping that it was just her friends bothering her, until she heard a vocoder voice outside the door.

"Get out. Now." Ordered the voice sternly.

Not wanting to cause more trouble than before, Mabel wiped away the rest of her tears and opened the door, seeing the Guanian Sleg right in front of her, who noticed Mabel's tear soaked face.

"Crying won't get you off from work." Said the guard, completely unsympathetic to her sadness.

He yanked Mabel by her sweater sleeve, forcefully pulling her with him, speed walked back to where the patients were being treated, Robbie's corpse now gone from the area but not the blood that had been spilt, and roughly pushed her away, almost making her lose her balance.

"You have work to do. Get to it." Ordered the Sleg, leaving Mabel to tend to the patients.

Candy and Grenda saw Mabel and gave her a look if she was alright, Mabel just looked away from them and returned to work, ignoring them to be in her thoughts, the guilt of the deaths around her, the depression of the life she lives now, and the anger against the Slegs, the rage she felt against them was greater than anything she felt now, she just wanted work to just end, to be with her brother, regretting that she missed out on meeting up with him during break and wanted to make it up to him.

She wanted to go home.

**O-O-O**

After the last hours of work, the final announcement to signal the end of the day had arrived.

"THE TIME IS NOW NINE P.M. ALL CITIZENS ARE REQUIRED TO RETURN TO THEIR HOMES FOR TOMMORROW. ANY CITIZEN CAUGHT VIOLATING CURFEW AT TEN P.M. WILL FACE SEVERE PENALTIES. THANK YOU."

Night had fallen on Gravity Falls, the dark cloudy sky from the day had turned even darker at night, a dark blue sky took over, the clouds now dispersed as the moon shined its light upon the town, with the aid of a starry night to make the dark sky beautiful, which would have lifted the spirits of the residents of Gravity Falls, yet the night's natural beauty was surrounded by the cruelty below, for the night was only meaningless in the town.

The CSF was more active at night, doubling patrols, extra loyalty checks, and even following some residents they suspected of treachery all the way to their homes, even breaching their homes just to preform inspections to confirm suspicions, even if they were wrong, all just to enforce their law and order on the people of Gravity Falls. The police were even harsher than in the day, always stalking the streets for poor victims to harass for their amusement, or to get them arrested so their records will look good on paper for extra benefits, so frequent arrests of people who didn't even break any laws would be made, being thrown to jail or worse for just minding their own business, it was a night of hell that never ended.

In the town square, Dipper waited for Mabel again, this time she actually came to the square as soon as she could. He waved to her as she came up to him, but even through the darkness of the night, he could see that his sister was off, that something was not right about her today. He saw that her eyes were red, along with dried tears from her face, indicating that she had been crying for quite some time, her facial expression looked down, as in she seemed depressed about something, with a look in her eyes that said _"I'm in pain."_, which definitely worried Dipper and even scared him to no end, wanting to know what was wrong.

"Are you okay?" Dipper asked his sister softly, being careful to not touch a nerve.

Mabel just looked at Dipper morbidly. "Can we talk about this at home?"

Dipper nodded and walked with Mabel back home, wrapping his arm around her shoulders to comfort her, to which she just ignored, stuck in her thoughts about what just happened.

The twins just stayed quiet the whole way home, they had to speak to the gate guards to get through, but they didn't talk to one another for the whole walk, both stuck in their own thoughts about what happened today.

Dipper still thought about Wendy's offer, about leaving Gravity Falls, still conflicted if he should go or not, but now seeing Mabel's condition, he was leaning more towards escape but still unsure if it really was the best for him and everyone else he loves. Mabel was still thinking back about Robbie, how that Sleg just blew his brains out like nothing, along with Stan's aftermath of his torture and Waddles dying, horrible thoughts that came rushing back to her and driving her to her breaking point, not sure if she can take all the pain and sorrow anymore.

The twins were close to home though, only a few blocks away until they could just talk it all out, Wendy's plan, if they would agree to it or not, what happened to Mabel at the church, everything could just be let go when they got home. But as the twins reached their block, they heard a voice that was the last thing they wanted to hear.

"You two. Stop where you are." Ordered a voice from behind.

The twins turned to see a Gecken CSF officer walking up to them, confirming their fears of being stopped by CSF, and they were not in the mood to deal with them now, especially not with everything that just happened today.

"How can we help you, officer?" Asked Dipper politely, not wanting to cause trouble with the officer.

"Not you. Her." Said the officer referring to Mabel, who felt anger when the officer wanted to talk to her, still stuck in her thoughts about everything she lost.

The officer noticed that Mabel was in a trance and wanted to snap her out of it. "Citizen. Look at me when I'm addressing you." Mabel just looked at the officer with annoyance and disgust, having no desire to talk to him.

The officer took a good look at Mabel, noticing not only the look in her eyes, but the dried blood on her sweater as well, raising the officer's suspicions. "You have blood on your clothes. Why is that?" Asked the officer demandingly.

Mabel didn't answer, not wanting to listen to the officer as she decided that she had it with the Slegs, making Dipper look at her fearfully at her lack of response.

"Citizen, why are your clothes covered in blood?" Repeated the officer, slightly raising his voice at Mabel, who still refused to answer.

Dipper attempted to whisper to Mabel. "Mabel, just-

"Shut it." Quickly interrupted the officer, not letting Dipper finish while still staring at Mabel, wanting to make her speak. "What happened?"

"I had an accident." Mabel replied lowly, which aggravated the officer that had little patience for vague answers.

"Take off the sweater." Ordered the officer, Mabel just ignored the officer's orders. "I said. Take. Off. The sweater." He repeated, Mabel still refusing to listen.

Dipper then tried talking to the officer himself. "Officer, please. She's had a-

"You don't speak unless spoken to, citizen." The officer interrupted again, raising his voice at Dipper even further before lowering it again and addressing Mabel again." Take off the sweater, or I will-

"No."

"Excuse me?" Said the officer, surprising both him and Dipper at Mabel's response.

"I'm not taking off my sweater." Mabel said firmly, refusing to give into the Gecken's orders.

"Talk back to me again, and I'll-

"Or you'll what? Beat me on the streets? I'd rather take a beating then listen to you assholes anymore." Argued Mabel.

"Citizen, put your hands behind your head." Ordered the officer, demanding that Mabel listen now.

Mabel lost it, she couldn't take it anymore. All she could do now is shout and argue with the officer now.

"I will NOT listen to you anymore! I've had to put up with this shit for ten fucking years! And after all the horrible things you monsters have done to me and everyone else, all the pain and misery you brought, all the people you've abused and murdered, I can't take it anymore! You do all of this for no reason! NO GOOD FUCKING REASON AT ALL! I will NEVER listen to any Sleg again, so you can take my sweater, AND SHOVE IT UP YOUR ASS!"

Both Dipper and the Sleg were shocked at Mabel's rant, not expecting an outburst like that from her at all, Dipper in particular was shocked out of fear, knowing that there was no way the officer would let this go, and he didn't.

The officer took out his CB radio and contacted other officers around the area. "I have a failure to comply with loyalty check, possible 10-103M. Sending coordinates now."

Mabel then spit at the officer's face, getting the saliva on his mask as he wiped it away, now angry at Mabel for her disobedient action and took out his baton, giving Mabel a swift hit to her gut and then her back, knocking her face down on the sidewalk pavement, Dipper in shock at the sudden action of the officer.

"Prepare to receive civil discipline." Said the officer as he raised his arm to commence the beating.

Dipper only had a split second to react, either let his sister get beaten and arrested so he would be safe at least, or stop the officer from his assault.

It was an easy choice.

Dipper grabbed the officer's arm as he was about to bring down his baton, engaging in a struggle with the Sleg for the weapon as Dipper pushed him away from his sister, not wanting her to get hurt again. Dipper strained himself in the struggle, due to his malnourished state, as the officer held the advantage in strength and overpowered Dipper, pushing him away and charged the twin brother with his baton, making swift, successful hits to his body, over and over as Dipper tried holding back shouts of pain, until Dipper tried backing away and shielded himself around his sister, who was slowly getting up from the blows she had received.

The officer charged again, swinging his baton at Dipper's head, the brother attempted to avoid it but due to his weakened state from lack of food and earlier beatings, he was unsuccessful and received the sharp blow to the head, getting knocked over to the ground next to Mabel, feeling lightheaded and an immense amount of pain, as if his head was hit by a ton of bricks. When Dipper tried getting up, the officer proceeded to lower himself to Dipper and wrapped the baton around his neck with both hands, putting Dipper in some kind of chokehold, preventing Dipper from breathing any air, he was going to strangle him to death.

Dipper struggled to breathe for air and escape the officer's grip, slowly getting weaker as he lost more oxygen, the officer showing no intent to let Dipper live. Mabel turned her head, still dizzy from the blow to her head as she saw what the officer was doing, enraged at what was happening as she got up as quickly as possible, still wobbly from the blow. She tried to pull the officer away from Dipper, but to no avail as the Sleg shook her off and made her fell over her back, but she refused to give up, she was not going to lose her brother to these things, she would never let that happen, she had to think of something fast, otherwise her brother would die right here and now and saw the gun at the officer's waist belt, still holstered in its place.

She had no choice.

Mabel got up quickly from the pavement and as fast as possible, grabbed the gun from the officer's holster, who was still focused on Dipper, and disarmed what looked to be the safety, and did what would be the most dangerous action to commit against the Slegs, aiming the gun at the Sleg and pulling the trigger.

*BANG!*

The officer slumped over, red blood pouring through the back of his head as he fell sideways, loosening his grip on Dipper and laid on the pavement, dead instantly from the bullet as the blood spilled on the concrete. Dipper panted heavily, trying to gulp up as much air as possible to breathe again, and turned to see the dead officer and then to Mabel, looking at her wide eyed as she stared at the body of the Sleg officer, shocked at herself for actually killing the officer. She dropped the gun out of fear, realizing what she had just done, as her brother got up and walked to her.

"I…I-

Dipper then put his hands on Mabel's shoulders, trying to get her attention as her eyes moved to Dipper's face, who looked more frightened than ever, realizing what was going to happen next.

"Mabel, we gotta go now." Dipper said quickly. "And I mean, NOW!"

Mabel shook her head to snap out of her trance and began sprinting with Dipper back to their home, not wanting to stick around any further, knowing that the other officers around the area would see their dead comrade and warn the CSF about the incident, and the CSF will NOT tolerate murder of their own officers. And now Dipper knew what answer to give Wendy.

Because escape is all that's left.

**O-O-O**

Disclaimer: I don't own Gravity Falls, but I do own the Slegs.


	8. Chapter 7

Authors note: So new chapter here, I don't have a lot to say here this time. Still trying to come up with new ideas for this story so I can keep it going, and I got a good one you'll see later on. So not much here except enjoy the new chapter and review please, criticism is helpful for me to be a better writer. Or praise the story if you want, your choice. So sit back and enjoy.

P.S. - Wendy is a badass in this chapter, that's all.

**Chapter 7: Leaving the Hellhole**

**O-O-O**

Run.

That's all the twins could do now, run. They had no choice, Mabel had killed the CSF officer, the worst thing you could do is murder one of the CSF, no matter what you try to say, that it was justified self-defense, even with evidence of that it didn't matter, killing one of CSF meant they would ALL come after you, every single member of CSF in the entire town will want to hunt you down and put every single bullet they have in your skull. And now that an officer was murdered, the CSF would organize a manhunt to hunt down the ones responsible for the murder, the ones being Dipper and Mabel, and give them the punishment they always gave to murderers, death.

Mabel didn't want to kill the officer, but it was going to be either him or her brother, and she would never sacrifice her brother and best friend, not after all these years, always sticking by each other, even before birth, she wouldn't just let her brother die like that, and Dipper understood that because he would have done the same.

With their quick sprinting, the twins managed to get to their house, and at the porch was Wendy waiting for the twins, who quickly ran up to the twins and noticed that they looked beat up, Dipper was glad to see her and Mabel was just confused to see her, but decided to ask Dipper about her later.

"What the hell happened?" Asked Wendy worryingly to the twins. "I just heard a gunshot from here."

"Stopped by officer… It got ugly… He got shot." Said Dipper between breaths, panting from the sprint. "CSF are gonna look for us now."

Wendy just stared in shock before responding. "What the fuck!" She exclaimed angrily. "Why did you kill him!?"

"I killed him, not Dipper." Said Mabel, not panting as much as Dipper. "But that asshole was going to kill Dipper. He was strangling him on the ground and-

"And you took his gun and shot him, right?" Asked Wendy angrily.

"Yes. But-

Wendy stared at Mabel with a sharp glare. "You couldn't have just knocked him out or pull his gun out on him and say, I have a gun, get off of Dipper. He would have listened."

"I-I panicked, okay!? Dipper was dying right in front of me and I… I didn't have time to think, I just shot him like that, and Dipper was going to die if I didn't." Said Mabel, almost on the verge of tears.

"Do you realize what you've just done?! Now the CSF are gonna hunt us all down!" Exclaimed Wendy and just shook her head and sighed. "You know what, we'll talk about this later. Right now, we need to get the hell out of here." Said Wendy, no longer wanting to waste time in this argument.

"Wait, what about Stan and Soos? You said we were going to wait for them here." Asked Dipper.

Wendy just sighed morbidly. "That was going to be part of plan A, sneaking out of here. But since you two decided to get in trouble with the law, we'll have to go with plan B, run."

Dipper looked at Wendy wide-eyed. "So we're just going leave them?"

"No, no. We'll find them along the way." Assured Wendy. "The problem with that is breaking out when the entire town is looking for us, so it's possible we might not be able to bring them with us if CSF catch up."

"Shit." Dipper mumbled to himself, knowing that Wendy had a point.

With the entire CSF in the town alert, it wouldn't take long for Dipper, Mabel, and Wendy to be found by them, since the CSF were organizing a manhunt as they spoke, and they had a reputation of quickly apprehending their targets so moving now would be best, but the twins had to get some things before they left.

"Can we at least get something from our house? It'll only be a few seconds, I promise." Pleaded Dipper.

"Fine, just hurry up. CSF will be here soon." Said Wendy as the twins ran inside their home, leaving Wendy to keep watch for any CSF coming towards them.

The twins quickly ran up to their room, knowing that they could only carry so much, the twins took their most prized possessions with them, Dipper's being the number three journal that he had been using as a journal for himself on the blank pages, and Mabel took something from the drawer that she quickly hid in her pocket, while Dipper hid his journal inside his hoodie. The twins took a few seconds to look at their room, knowing that it would be the last time they would see it, and left as quickly as they came to Wendy, who was still looking at every direction for Sleg police.

"Okay, where do we go now?" Asked Dipper to Wendy as she looked at every direction around her, trying to figure out where to go from here.

"We go left from here, and then we make a right at the end of the block, straight towards that road." Said Wendy pointing out the direction to go. "Let's go."

Wendy ran left, the twins following close behind as they heard a new announcement from the speakers.

"ATTENTION. TOWN OA-243 IS NOW ON ALERT LEVEL THREE. ALL CITIZENS ARE REQUIRED TO STAY IN THEIR HOMES UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. ANY CITIZEN WHO DISOBEYS THEIR ORDERS WILL BE MARKED AS A THREAT AND WILL BE DEALT WITH ACCORDINGLY BY CSF PERSONAL. THANK YOU."

"Alert level three? It was only one guy." Said Dipper, surprised at how quick the Slegs found out about the dead officer and how high the level was.

"Gravity Falls is a stone's throw away from the Black Citadel. They won't take any chances with it around." Explained Wendy as the three companions reached the end of the block.

Wendy could then see lights from the distance, two vehicles were approaching on the road straight down where the group was at. The vehicles were APCs, they had the appearance of a modern light APC used by human SWAT, but they were colored mainly black with white lettering of "CSF" on their sides, they built with a slimmer and sleek design than normal APCs, with two front wheels and back wheels, showing that these APCs were made more for speed and quick transport rather than combat, but they were good for defense for the Sleg SWAT teams despite having no weapons attached to it.

Not only that, but the CSF had air support as well, above the APCs was a Sleg helicopter, Also painted black and had white lettering on its sides, the chopper had the appearance of a human SWAT helicopter, but like the APC, it was built with a slimmer and sleek design than human helicopters, it had a large spotlight under it so it could see well in the dark, and it looked like it was built more for speed and searching for enemies rather than killing them, helping out CSF ground forces with their search.

Wendy signaled the twins to hide behind a house close by the left as the three ran as quickly as they could to the side of the house, hiding behind the house walls, the twins feeling fear rush inside them, hoping that they were not spotted already by the CSF. Wendy peeked from the edge to spot the APCs, who were moments away from the groups hiding spot, but to their relief, the APCs turned right on the road, unaware of the group's presence while the chopper shined its light on the house the SWAT were going to rather than where the group was hiding at.

As they stopped at the twin's house, the APCs began unloading the SWAT teams it transported, all armed with sub-machine guns similar in appearance to an MP5k, all looking ready to raid the house and gun down anyone inside, the same house the group just escaped a few moments ago as the teams moved into formation to breach.

"Damn. Too close." Whispered Dipper, looking at the SWAT team already breaching the house.

"Let's go. They won't be distracted for long." Said Wendy as she signaled the twins to follow her lead, moving back towards the sidewalk and sprinted as fast as possible, the SWAT teams too occupied with their raid, and the group just ran down the sidewalk to wherever Wendy was leading the twins.

**O-O-O**

The twins couldn't believe this was happening now, running away from their home that CSF were searching by now, avoiding cops so they wouldn't get shot, and being led to escape from Gravity Falls by Wendy, who they haven't seen for eight years, while trying to find Soos and Stan along the way, if they could. The twins would have seen the two by now, since Soos and Stan usually take this route down to work and come back from, yet they haven't seen them at all, and that wasn't just because it was dark outside.

The group moved more quietly now, not wanting to attract any unwanted attention as they slowly moved on the sidewalk, blending in with the darkness of the clouded night so they wouldn't be spotted easily, hearing sirens wail from the distance, helicopters whir in the sky, hiding from the more frequent CSF foot patrols and chopper spotlights that occasionally passed, and even avoiding checkpoints made by SWAT on certain areas of the road. This made the group extra cautious now, since CSF already knew that they were somewhere in the town and not at their home, so stealth played a key factor to the group's survival and escape.

The feeling of being hunted already started to sink into the group, always nervous about what's at every corner, if they were being watched or not, the fears of being found increased with every second, it was madness in Gravity Falls. While Wendy was already used to that sort of thing, she worried more about the twins in that matter, since they've never been in this situation before, being pursued by others who want nothing more than to kill you would make anyone scared, especially if this was the first time someone felt that, so Wendy made sure to keep a close eye on the twins, not wanting them to panic from the tension and dread going on now.

As the group quietly sneaked around in the cover of darkness, they spotted two figures and froze in place, hoping that they were not spotted. When they looked ahead, two figures they saw were speed walking, as if they were in a rush to get home, one looked quite chubby while the other more shambled, which meant that the figures were not Slegs. The twins took a closer look at the two figures and recognized the two figures, Soos and Stan. Relieved that they were okay, the twins waved to them, getting their attention and signaled them to come towards them, while Wendy looked around the area to see if anyone else was around to see them, while she was relieved to see Soos and Stan, she was more concerned about getting everyone out alive and wanted to rush out of town before CSF catch on to them.

"Dudes?" Called out Soos, quite confused to see the twins outside as he and Stan walked up to them. "What are you two doing here?"

"We're here to find you two, and we have a visitor with us." Said Mabel pointing to Wendy next to Dipper, making Soos shocked to see her while Stan didn't really seem to react as much.

"Look guys, as much as I want to catch up, we need to go now." Said Wendy as she rapidly walked ahead of everyone else. "We'll talk when we get out."

"Wait, Wendy don't-

But Wendy was already at the end of the block, ignoring Soos calling out to her since she was more busy trying to scout out for CSF, only to find two CSF Gecken officers right over to the left where she was looking and spotted her and her group, making the red head curse under her breath for her slip up.

"Hey, stop where you are!" Called out one of the officers as they both got out their batons and ran towards Wendy.

The rest of the group could only watch as the two officers made their way towards Wendy, who put her fists up and prepared for a fight.

"Come 'on you fuckers! Let's see what you got." Taunted Wendy as the Geckens charged at her.

The first officer swinged his baton at Wendy's head hoping to knock her out cold, but Wendy dodged the attack by quickly stepping to left, the second officer tried the same tactic as the first but was delivered a swift kick to the stomach by Wendy before he could swing his baton, knocking him back but not too hurt because of the vest he wore underneath his uniform. The first officer tried hitting Wendy at her back this time but failed when the red head turned to grab the officer's hand, engaging in a struggle for the weapon.

Wendy wanted to end this fight quick, having no desire to stay in Gravity Falls anymore, so she twisted the officer's hand, making him drop his baton from the sharp pain of the twist. Wendy grabbed the baton from the ground, dodging the second officer's swing from his baton by ducking, and used the baton to hit him in his knee, causing the officer to go down on one knee in pain. The first officer pulled out his gun with his untwisted hand, but Wendy managed to knock out the gun from his grip with a hit from her baton, and then swiftly wacked the officer on the side of his left face, using enough force to knock him down on the ground and break his jaw, clenching the side of his face in pain. The second officer tried to hit Wendy from behind as well, but she gave the officer a roundhouse kick to his head, knocking him out cold from the sudden force, and Wendy finished off the already downed officer with the broken jaw, giving him one last blow to the head with his own baton, knocking him unconscious as well.

When the fight was over, Wendy dropped threw the baton on the ground, not needing it for anything else and searched the officers for anything useful, while everyone else just stared at Wendy in awe from her display of her fighting skills.

"Holy shit." Said Dipper, amazed at how Wendy took down two CSF officers with her bare hands. "I know you're a good fighter but…Wow."

"I picked up a lot of skills over the years." Said Wendy, grabbing the gun from the officer she kicked in the face along with any pistol clips. "What you saw was only one of them."

Wendy then walked over to the street, picking up the other pistol she kicked away from another officer, and walked over to the group with a pistol in each hand, along with a few pistol clips she put in her vest.

Wendy gave Dipper one of the pistols. "Only use it for emergencies."

Dipper nodded and put away the gun behind his pants, hiding it under his hoodie while Wendy handed the other gun to Soos, along with the other pistol clips she scavenged.

"I was trying to warn you about that." Said Soos, wanting to finish his sentence from before about the CSF officers. "Those guys were following us home ever since the announcement from earlier. I think they were going do something to us."

Wendy took a quick glance at the two unconscious officers before looking back at Soos.

"Well, they won't do anything now." Quipped Wendy.

"Are we leaving?" Asked Stan, wondering if what was going on was really happening.

Wendy patted Stan on his shoulder out of sympathy, knowing well about his condition. "Yeah we are, old man. Now let's get out of here before they wake up."

The group complied with Wendy and followed her, leaving the two officers behind as they left the scene. The group was glad that everyone was back together again, but before they can catch up on old times, they had to escape Gravity Falls first, and hoped that their reunion wouldn't end at the same place where it started.

And this hope would help them keep going.

**O-O-O**

Disclaimer: I don't own Gravity Falls, but I do own the Slegs.


	9. Chapter 8

Authors note: Sorry I've been gone so long, I had a lot of stuff to do with family and college, also my computer was acting up lately an had to be fixed so that's what the long delay was about. Now that's out of the way, I had been throwing ideas for this story left and right trying to decide where I want to go with it once the Mystery Shack crew gets out of Gravity Falls, so delays are to be expected to writers block. If you guys have anything you want to add, you can PM me and I'll see if your ideas could work or not, I'll even give you credit because I'm nice. Other than that, I encourage you as usual to review, don't be shy if you want to share your opinion because reviews WILL help me out as a writer, so sit back and enjoy this new chapter.

P.S.- This is a LONG ASS chapter I made, longest one I ever made so I hope it makes up for the delay.

**Chapter 8: Conflict**

**O-O-O**

Although the group was finally together again, that didn't mean much in this town anymore.

The former Mystery Shack crew didn't have time to catch up with each other properly, since they were more concerned about avoiding CSF, who were breathing down their necks every second, sending out all kinds of forces at their disposal to look for them, while at the same time containing every other citizen in their homes to prevent further escape and even interrogating a few citizens for info about their fugitives, so escape was all the group needed to do now, talking about old times would come later.

The five companions were now out of the residential zone of the town, with Wendy leading the rest of the group to a street junction, with three roads leading to their respective directions, one of the roads led to the town square across the other side of the town, which happened to be the same road that two CSF APCs happened to come from, making the group hide behind the wall of a wide and narrow building, hoping they won't stop at the junction. Unfortunately, only one of the APCs passed by the road beside the group, while the other stopped at the middle of the junction and unloaded its SWAT team inside, which consisted of two Guanians and four Geckens, armed with sub machine guns and flash bang grenades, all ready to hunt down their fugitives as their squad leader, one of the Guanians, gave orders to his squad as Wendy peeked from the corner of the building wall to watch the SWAT team.

"You two, with me. The rest of you stay here. If you see the fugitives, shoot on sight." Ordered the squad leader, taking two Geckens with him to patrol while the other Slegs stayed near the APC.

"Shit." Cursed Wendy silently as she saw the Slegs patrol their perimeter. "They've just set up another checkpoint."

"What do we do now?" Asked Mabel silently, hoping for a plan from Wendy. "We have to get through somehow."

"We're not gonna shoot them if that's what you're asking." Responded Wendy, making a sardonic quip to Mabel about her past actions.

"Okay, I get it." Said Mabel, annoyed at Wendy's remark. "But seriously, what do we do?"

"The plan here was to sneak around on this street, but with CSF around, we'll have to find another way." Said Wendy, looking around her surroundings to figure something out.

"What if we sneak inside this building?" Suggested Dipper, pointing at the building's window close by the group. "We can go through here instead. They abandoned it a while ago so it's the last place they'll expect us to be."

"Yeah, we can do that." Agreed Wendy as she went to the window. "But is the window unlocked?"

Wendy tried lifting the window slowly, and to everyone's relief it worked, making Wendy smile at Dipper.

"You always were the smart one, Dip." Complemented Wendy, making Dipper blush slightly the compliment. "Soos, can you give us a lift?"

The window was a bit high up, so Soos cupped his hands so everyone would get a lift inside. Dipper was up first and climbed up with ease with Soos's help, same went with Mabel and Stan when they went up as well, it was only Wendy and Soos left now, but Wendy didn't come up like the others.

"Uh, no offense Soos but, you need the boost more than me." Said Wendy awkwardly, trying not to offend Soos for his girth. "It won't be easy trying to pull you up from there."

Soos nodded understandably, accepting Wendy's help as he was lifted up by Wendy, who struggled a little to lift him, but the twins helped the former handyman up inside, leaving only Wendy left, who just jumped on the open ledge and let herself inside with the rest of the group, closing the window behind her so the Slegs won't be suspicious of an open window, since even the smallest hint of suspicion would make them want to check out the abandoned building, definitely the last thing the group wanted.

**O-O-O**

Observing the room around them, the group could tell that this building had been abandoned for quite some time, it used to be some kind of cheap motel with only two floors, now that it was abandoned, it looked even worse on the inside without the little maintenance it had before. The room the group was in was filthy, the wooden floors were rotten and creaky, the few furniture in the room such as the bed, drawer, and television were covered in dust and hadn't been touched since the ten years that passed, the wallpaper was tearing and the ceiling looked like it would fall apart from age, there was even some mold on the ceiling corner to add to the filth of the room.

"Feels just like home." Remarked Dipper to his sister, trying to lighten her mood a bit with a joke.

"Except its missing CSF busting down the door." Replied Mabel, not really in the mood for a joke.

"Just trying to lighten the mood here." Defended Dipper.

"We're on the run from CSF and you want to tell a joke now?" Said Mabel, still annoyed at Dipper's remark about their previous home. "For all we know, they could break down the door right now."

"Don't jinx it, dude. That's bad luck if you say that." Advised Soos, making Mabel brush off the advice.

"Bad luck? We've been having bad luck for ten years. I'm just-

"Guys!" Wendy interrupted the conversation, whispering silently to not attract the SWAT team outside. "We can argue about bullshit when we're out of town, so right now, I need you all to shut the fuck up."

The group stood silent after Wendy's interruption.

"I have no idea what's happening right now." Said Stan, forgetting that they were on the run due to his memory loss. "Can we go home now?"

"Yeah, we're going home. Just follow me." Said Wendy, standing up and walked quietly to the door, opening it slowly and checking the hallway.

Wendy saw no sign of anyone inside, checking the hallway from both sides, which had nothing but closed doors from other motel rooms, with the left end of the hallway leading to the lobby and front entrance of the building while the right end led to a dead end. The red head signaled her friends to follow as they quietly walked out the room to the hallway, making sure to not cause noise with the creaky floor and closed the door behind them.

The air was filled with a musty scent, mostly from the age and poor conditions the motel had over the years, motels were never the most sanitary buildings around, even the Mystery Shack had better conditions than this place. The group reached the lobby room, which was quite big for a motel, it had a spacious desk counter at the right end of the lobby, facing the stained glass doors at the front, with a few chairs close by the doors and a brochure stand that recommended other vacation sites to go to, if you could call them that anymore.

"Let's go to the other side of the motel. There should be another window to sneak out of." Suggested Wendy as the group walked to the other hallway.

But when the group was halfway through the lobby, they could hear muffled footsteps and vocoder voices from the direction of front doors, making the group scatter to hiding. Wendy, Soos, and Stan made it to the other hallway, but Dipper and Mabel had to hide behind the desk counter, not having enough time to reach the others as the front doors opened, revealing two SWAT officers, one Gecken and the other Guanian, that were supposed to be guarding the checkpoint at the APC, both walking in with their sub machine guns lowered, with gun straps around their shoulders to hold their weapons.

"So what exactly happened again? I didn't really catch the briefing earlier." Asked the Gecken Sleg to his fellow officer, not aware of the humans in the building listening to their conversation.

"One of the CSF officers in a residential area, sector R-01, was murdered a few hours ago. There was a short struggle between the officer and two citizens, it ended when one of the citizens grabbed the officer's gun while his back was turned and one round was discharged at the back of his head, killing him instantly."

The Gecken scoffed at the short explanation about the officer. "Fucking idiot. Who were the two humans?"

"Twin siblings, Dipper and Mabel Pines. They've never had much trouble with us until now." Said the Guanian as his Gecken partner sat down on one of the chairs. "There's more to it though."

"Why's that?" Asked the Gecken, laying back on the chair for a more comfortable position, letting go of his weapon and tightening the gun strap so the gun wouldn't hang loosely.

"We've had recent reports that two more officers were wounded while following two other citizens who weren't in their homes during early curfew. They didn't die but were knocked unconscious, one of the officers even had a broken jaw." Explained the Guanian, now making the Gecken chuckle.

"What's wrong with these guys? They can't take on two humans?" Chuckled the Gecken amusingly.

"That's the thing, the fugitives weren't the ones that knocked out the officers. It's most likely that someone else helped them, but we're not sure who." Explained the Guanian, now peeking the Gecken's interest. "The two other citizens the officers were tracking never made it home, most likely with the fugitives and their mysterious helper."

"They won't last long." Assured the Gecken confidently. "So while everyone else is busy, I'll have a smoke."

"I'll search around the building just in case." Said the Guanian as the Gecken removed his mask.

"Okay then. You go fuel your paranoia while I relax." Said the Gecken in his real voice instead of his vocoder voice in his mask, which had a mixture of deep and high pitches, but slightly more high pitched, as he took out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter.

The Guanian ignored his partner, more focused with his duty than smoking cigarettes, making the twin's fear of being found rise with the Sleg presence here. Wendy, Soos and Stan could only hide in the hallway now, since they would be found if they tried to get to the twins, so Wendy gave the twins a hand sign to stay put and wait it out until the two Slegs went away.

Wendy peeked out of the corner to see what was going on at the lobby, seeing the Guanian walk to the hallway that her group came from while the Gecken was still resting on a chair, placing his mask on a chair next to him and lit a cigarette in his mouth. Wendy got a decent look at the Gecken's face, revealing what one species of Sleg looked like, which had a reptilian appearance with olive green scales as skin and yellow reptile eyes to match, but not much else was seen at her angle.

Wendy turned her head to the Guanian, who walked close by the counter that the twins were hiding behind, and began looking down at the floor suspiciously, slightly cocking his head to the side as if he found something and crouched down for a closer look, making Wendy fear for the twin's safety more than ever.

"When was the last time anyone came inside this place?" Asked the Guanian to his Gecken companion.

"No one else for the past ten years. Why do you ask?" Replied the Gecken.

"Because I found shoeprints on the floor." Said the Guanian, looking at the dusty shoeprints on the floor while the Gecken got up from his chair, with his cigarette in his mouth and walked over to see the prints, while the twins still cowered behind the counter, unsure what to do about the Slegs without getting more attention.

"Oh shit." Said the Gecken as he saw took a close look at the prints, loosening his weapon strap and cocked his sub machine gun. "Those prints are new. They're inside!"

The twins were terrified now, the Slegs knew they were here. It was only a matter of time before they would be found now as the Gecken began checking the prints that led to the counter. While the twins didn't know what to do now, Wendy did, and it was something she hoped it would have never have to come down to as she pulled out her pistol, which was a CSF officer pistol, and aimed it at the Gecken's head.

"I'm calling backup." Said the Guanian as he prepared his weapon as well and used his CB radio to call for help. "Sir, we found-

Before the Guanian could get his sentence out, he was interrupted when a shot rang out from the left, and saw his Gecken companion drop dead on the spot, with a hole in his head leaking crimson red blood on the floor, making the Guanian instinctively take cover behind the counter at its right side, not realizing the twins were hiding next to him until he took a quick peek for his shooter above the counter, only to see the twins just below his line of sight.

Fearing for their lives, Dipper franticly pull out his pistol to shoot at the Guanian, only for him to duck back to cover before Dipper shot at him, making the Guanian sprint quickly to the hallway behind him, while getting shot at a few times behind the back by Wendy rapidly taking shots, managing to get behind the hallway pass for cover and began calling for the rest of his squad for help on his CB radio, barely managing to keep his breath as blood poured from his back from the several shots he had to take earlier, bulletproof vests can only take so much damage from a hail of bullets from the back compared to the front.

While the Guanian was busy calling for help, the twins took this chance and tried running back to the hallway where Wendy was for an escape, only to end up ducking back into cover when the Guanian peeked out of cover to shoot at the twins, unloading a dozen shots from his sub machine gun, just missing the twins due to how quickly they ducked back down, giving Wendy to aim and shoot the Guanian at his head, the bullet piercing through the lens of his mask into his head, finally killing the Guanian as he slumped over sideways on the ground, blood pouring from his head and back as it stained the old and dusty floors.

The twins stood up, looking at the open wide entrance to see the rest of the SWAT team closing in on the motel, three Geckens and one Guanian, all ready for a firefight.

Wendy quickly ran up to the dead Gecken's body, putting away her pistol and grabbed his sub machine gun, slinging the weapon strap over her body and took as many clips as she could carry from the corpse,

"Get down!" Shouted Wendy as she took one of the flash bang grenades from the Gecken's corpse, pulling the pin and throwing the flash bang towards the SWAT team, while dashing behind the counter for cover, ducking down with the twins.

The SWAT team took cover by the edges of the entrance, two Geckens on the left while the other Gecken and Guanian to the right, not wanting to risk the chance of being effected by the grenade as the flash bang exploded, making a loud popping noise while emitting a quick and bright white flash, blinding anyone who looked at its flash.

The flash bang managed to blind most of the team not expecting the flash except the Guanian, who shielded his eyes from the flash and retaliated by shooting up the wooden counter with his sub machine gun, pinning Wendy and the twins from moving or even peeking their heads as the rest of the SWAT team regained their vision, with the Guanian and one of the Geckens advancing inside, while the other two Slegs stayed back to provide covering fire.

When the Guanian stopped firing to reload, Soos aimed his gun and shot several rounds at the advancing Gecken to the left, managing to get a lucky shot to his head, killing the Gecken as he fell backwards, while the Guanian who finished reloading opened fire at Soos, making the handyman go back to cover but not without a bullet grazing his left arm, which caused a sharp pain and some minor bleeding but no major damage as the Guanian took cover behind the brochure stand.

"We need a plan now!" Exclaimed Dipper over the gunfire from the Slegs. "God knows how many will show up if we don't leave soon."

"We'll pin down the Slegs with covering fire. That way, we'll have a chance to get the hell out of here before we all get killed." Suggested Wendy. "You and I will have to run and gun if we all want to get out of here."

"Right." Agreed Dipper as he looked at his sister. "Mabel, you'll be ahead so you make it to cover first. I don't want you to get hit."

Mabel nodded as she went to the edge of the counter, still behind cover as she waited for the right moment to run.

"Soos! On the count of three, we fire back!" Exclaimed Wendy as Soos prepared himself.

"ONE! TWO! THREE!"

At three, Dipper, Wendy and Soos fired their guns at each Sleg behind cover, pinning them from behind as Mabel began running to cover at the hallway Soos and Stan were at, with Wendy and Dipper following close behind, unloading all they had in their guns to keep the Slegs pinned, even if they were just spraying bullets at the Slegs, it gave Wendy and the twins enough time to make it to cover before they had to reload their weapons, which they did so while everyone in their group ran towards the window at the end of the hallway for their escape.

The Sleg SWAT team followed close behind, with the Guanian leader ordering the two Geckens to follow the humans to the hallway while he ran back outside, wanting to flank the group from another direction. The two Geckens took cover behind the hallway pass while the human group almost reached the end of the hallway to the window, but Wendy saw the two Geckens from the distance and noticed that a few doors to some of the motel rooms were open.

"In the rooms!" Wendy shouted as the Geckens opened fire at the group, with Wendy and the twins barging in the room on right while Soos and Stan went to the one on the left, just barely managing to avoid the hail of gunfire as it shattered the glass from the window that was supposed to be the exit.

Soos and Wendy tried to fire back at the Geckens who were now advancing forward to the group, but the Geckens had faster reactions and fired first, preventing the two humans from firing back as they hid behind the edges of the rooms they were in, shielding them from the bullets that could have ended them.

"The windows!" Shouted Wendy. "We can go through the windows in the rooms!"

Mabel ran to the window in her room while Stan did the same in his room, opening them so the group could escape the motel. While Mabel managed to get her room's window open and jumped out with Dipper close behind to cover her, Stan hesitated when he saw a large figure of a Guanian right outside the glass of his window running towards him.

"Shit!" Cursed Stan as the Guanian broke through the window while performing a combat roll, only to be met with Stan charging at him, somewhat throwing off his balance as he was pushed against the wall, dropping his gun at the sudden force Stan had brought.

Soos realized this and was going to aim at the Guanian to shoot at, but the Geckens made a quick dash to the end of the hallway when they ran out of ammo in their guns, with one of the Geckens hitting Soos in the head with the butt of his gun, knocking the handyman down while the other Gecken charged at Wendy in the other room and began a struggle with the redhead, knocking her gun away from her hands.

"Wendy!" Shouted Dipper fearfully as he saw Wendy getting attacked.

"You two go! We'll meet up at the store by the motel!" Said Wendy in her struggle with the Gecken. "We can handle this! Just fucking go!"

The twins complied and ran to the store, going behind the building to hide from anymore CSF, while regretting leaving the rest of the group to fend for themselves against the Slegs.

**O-O-O**

"Left hook!" Shouted Stan across the other room as he gave his Guanian foe his strongest punch to his face, who barely jerked his head from the force of Stan's punch, as the old man continued to give the Sleg his boxing punches, who was unfazed by Stan's attempt at hand to hand combat. The Guanian grabbed hold of one of Stan's fists, and used his other hand to grab hold of Stan's neck and began choking him, while letting go of Stan's fist and used his one hand to lift the old man above the ground.

The Gecken behind Stan was about to give him a surprise assault but was unable to when Soos grabbed the Gecken by his leg, pulling him down of the floor while quickly getting up, trying to shake of the impact he received to his head from earlier, but the Gecken used his leg to kick Soos in his gut, knocking him down on his back as the Gecken crawled to Soos, pinning down the handyman as he began punching the living daylights out of him as Soos tried blocking the punches with his arms.

Meanwhile, Wendy was in a heated struggle with her Gecken attacker, who dropped his gun and began punching her rapidly at her gut, grunting in pain from the sharp blows until she managed to knee the Gecken in the groin, giving her the chance to push her foe away and pull out her hatchet, using it for one quick chop at the side of the Gecken's neck, piercing his jugular as he made a gasping choking sound, and forcefully pulled the hatchet blade from the Gecken's neck, making it squirt out blood as the Gecken fell over on his back, trying to cover his fatal neck wound with both hands in a futile effort to save himself from bleeding out.

Wendy heard a loud roar that rivaled a lion's from across the other room, which came from the Guanian inside it. Wendy looked across to see Soos being pummeled on the ground right outside the hallway, while Stan was thrown across the room like a ragdoll onto the room's bed. With only a few seconds to act, Wendy charged at the Gecken on top of Soos, swinging her hatchet at the side of the Gecken's face, the hatchet blade deeply piercing through the Sleg's mask as the Gecken screamed in pain, with Wendy getting the Gecken off of Soos, the hatchet still embedded in the Sleg's flesh, as she dragged him to the wall by the room doorway, slamming his head at the wall until the hatchet came off, the Gecken falling over dead due to the rapid blunt force that he received, even his helmet couldn't protect him for so long as blood poured out of his head wound.

"Wendy… Help Stan." Said Soos as he winched while trying to get up, with Wendy rushing past him inside the room with the Guanian, which was pretty much a death wish considering how tough it was to take on a Guanian in close quarters combat.

Wendy saw Stan on the bed, gasping for air from being choked for so long by the Guanian, along with the Guanian himself as he clenched his fists and slammed his arms down on Stan's leg like a gorilla, making Stan emit a bloodcurdling scream while a sickening crunch could be heard, making Wendy's spine shiver from the mere sound of what she just heard.

"STAN!" Shouted Wendy, anger filling her as she jumped on top of the seven foot tall Guanian from behind, wraping her arms and legs around the Sleg as he tried shaking her off his back, but Wendy was determined to hang on and used her hatchet to wrap around the Guanain's neck to choke him out, making the Guanian gasp for air and moved around the room to try and slam Wendy against the walls so she would loosen her grip, making Wendy trying to endure the pain of being slammed over and over across the room.

Soos managed to get up and realized that Wendy would not hold her grip for long, and assisted by grabbing the Guanian in front, trying to hold him in place as the Sleg still gasped and let out an occasional roar while trying to escape from the two human's grip.

"Hold on!" Shouted Soos to Wendy as he gripped the Guanian as tight as he could and rammed him against the wall, with Wendy still managing to hold her chokehold on the Sleg as Soos kept the Guanian at the corner of the wall, giving the two humans a better chance at winning the brutal struggle.

The Guanian's breathing grew less and less, he stopped roaring and began more gasps instead, barely getting any oxygen as the muscular Sleg grew weak, until what seemed like forever to Soos and Wendy, he finally stopped struggling, Soos now letting go of the Guanian as he stepped back, letting the Sleg drop on his knees with Wendy now standing, still choking the Sleg out from behind as he was barely breathing now, until Wendy finally finished off the brute by using all her physical strength to twist his head sideways, snapping the Guanian's neck and releasing the Sleg from her grip as he fell frontward, now dead after the long struggle.

Wendy and Soos had no words to say now, all they could do was pant out of exhaustion from their conflict, which started as a firefight and ended in a savage brawl to the death, brushing death in the face more than once. But the two had to tend to Stan now who still laid on the bed, still groaning in pain.

"Mister Pines? Are you okay?" Asked Soos, hoping that the crunch from before didn't come from Stan.

"My leg." Cried out Stan, making Wendy and Soos's fears come true. "Bastard broke my leg."

"What do we do?" Asked Soos to Wendy, who pinched two fingers between her face.

"We can't just leave him here." Said Wendy, calming her breathing. "You'll have to carry him out."

Soos nodded and slowly lifted Stan in his arms, making Stan cry out in pain from his broken leg.

"Shit, it's bad. Real bad." Said Wendy noticing how quick Stan reacted to the pain of his broken leg. "But we still need to move as quickly as possible."

"No." Interrupted Stan. "Just leave me here."

Wendy interjected. "Stan, we're all getting out of here. We can-

"I said no." Insisted Stan. "I'll only slow you down."

"But mister Pines-

"Put me down Soos!" Demanded Stan, making Soos comply as he set Stan back down on the bed. "Thank you."

"Stan, don't do this. I promised that I'd get you all out, ALL of you." Argued Wendy, trying to convince Stan to come with them. "You can't just give up."

"I'm giving up on myself because I know I can't make it. I know that if I keep going like this, I'll die. But I'm not giving up on the rest of you." Stan argued back. "I'm not going to drag down the rest of you because of me, I've done it before and regretted it. That's something even my memory loss can't get rid of."

"Mister Pines." Soos said somberly. "Please."

"Soos. Before my mind goes blank, I want you to know that you're like a son to me. Even if I don't pay you and heckle you, you were still like a son to me." Said Stan, making Soos tear up as Stan turned to Wendy. "Wendy, you've always been lazy, but you always been good friends with my niece and nephew, which is more than enough to make up for your slacking off. Take good care of those little gremlins."

Wendy silently nodded, respecting Stan's wishes to be left alone as she walked towards the window. "Soos, come on. He's not coming with us."

Soos looked at Stan in his eyes, who gave him a look that convinced him to leave, making Soos nod his head as he walked towards the open window, climbing right out while Wendy went over to pick up one of the Gecken's sub machine guns and reloaded the empty clip and took the last two clips with her and walked towards the window.

"Wendy." Said Stan, making Wendy stop in her tracks to listen to Stan. "Please tell them… you know what I mean."

Wendy took a deep sigh out of sadness and understanding, knowing what Stan meant by that. "I will."

Wendy climbed out of the window, leaving Stan to his fate as he laid upon the old bed, thinking about his current thoughts before they disappeared yet again, quietly drifting off to sleep in whatever new thoughts he had before silently whispering to himself.

"I'm home."

**O-O-O**

Disclaimer: I do not own Gravity Falls, but I do own the Slegs.


	10. Chapter 9

Authors note: New chapter is here already. I'm personally glad that I got this chapter done, it means I can finally get out other cool ideas that I've been wanting to use for a long time. This chapter was a little rushed than the last one because I just wanted to get out of Gravity Falls already, as much as I love the town, there are other places to explore. But that doesn't mean it's the last time we see it because of obvious reasons if you read the story, but it will take a while until this town is seen again. Other than that, please review and enjoy the new chapter.

**Chapter 9: Narrow Escape**

**O-O-O**

Wendy wanted to help Stan, she really did. She knows that she and Stan never really had the best relationship, especially when it came to working at the Mystery Shack, always slacking off and never showing even an ounce of respect to her former boss, but deep down inside that crusty geezer, Stan had a heart, especially when it came to Dipper and Mabel. She knew that what Stan was telling her about his broken leg, that all he would do is slow the rest of the group down and get everyone killed, it was nothing but the truth which was surprising to hear from Stan, and the least she could do for him, to finally show some form of respect to the old man, was to abide to his wish to be left behind, but she still felt guilty about it and regretted not giving Stan any form of appreciation in the past.

Wendy promised everyone, including herself, that the group would ALL make it out, no matter what cost it would take, she wanted everyone to leave and have some kind of happy reunion. But life is cruel, and in a world where loss is common, she should have expected this, yet she still felt surprised that this happened, despite living in a world where every day a sacrifice had to be made to stay alive. She was still shocked at how cruel life could be, and how even after all this cruelty, she still managed to keep her heart and not lose hope when it's being dashed by the Slegs, which was rare for anyone in this world.

"Fuck." Wendy cursed to herself. "Not again."

"Again?" Asked Soos, wiping away his tears from abandoning Stan.

Wendy shook her head, trying not to think about her darker thoughts. "I-it's nothing. We should go now."

Soos frowned but nodded his head in agreement, and proceeded with Wendy leading the way to run to the store across the motel, checking her dark surroundings for any CSF, she could hear distant sirens from behind her, meaning that CSF were most likely going to investigate the motel, they would have heard the shots by now. The group had to move now more than ever, they somehow managed to wipe out a SWAT team on their own, which was surprising to say the least, but all their training must of worn off over these ten years, doing absolutely nothing in a small town that had little activity going on until now, but it was still pure luck that most of the group made it out.

Soos and Wendy could see Dipper and Mabel wave to them, and they went behind the build where they hid to meet up. It didn't take long for the twins to suspect something was wrong, their Grunkle Stan wasn't here, and quickly changed into morbid expressions to Wendy and Soos's dismay.

"Where's Stan?" Asked Dipper, fearing for the worst with the lack of his Grunkle's presence, while Mabel just covered her mouth in shock, expecting the bad news.

Wendy thought to herself if she should tell the truth, that they abandoned Stan because of a broken leg, that he wanted to be left behind because he felt like a burden, something that Wendy agreed with Stan on as much as she didn't want to, but that wouldn't be a good excuse to leave someone's loved one behind, she knew the twins would react furiously and try to go back for their Grunkle, and Wendy didn't want to lose anyone else at this point, so she made a tough choice.

"He… He didn't make it." Lied Wendy, looking down at the ground to avoid eye contact from the twins. "One of the Slegs backed me into a corner, he was about to squash my head like a melon until Stan jumped up behind him. He was shaken off and the Sleg just…"

Wendy stopped speaking, not wanting to tell the rest of the lie when she looked back at the twins, giving her sad gazes as Mabel was already tearing up while Dipper just stared blankly at Wendy, not wanting to believe what she was saying.

"No." Whispered Dipper, covering his face with both hands. "It can't be."

"I'm so sorry, Dipper." Said Wendy solemnly, silently hating herself for telling the twins, especially Dipper, something horrible like this. "I wish I could have stopped him but-

"Stop." Interrupted Dipper, uncovering his hands to face Wendy, with tears forming in his eyes. "Just stop."

Wendy just listened to Dipper, not speaking about Stan anymore while more guilt racked up inside her.

"Can we just go now?" Said Dipper, not wanting to listen to Wendy's lie anymore, which he believed was the truth along with Mabel.

Wendy nodded her head and proceeded to lead the way, going ahead of the twins behind the store, but not before she passed by Soos who wrapped his arm around Mabel, who was silently crying to herself and covered her face while the handyman tried comforting her, and gave Wendy a look before shaking his head, to which Wendy replied by mouthing to Soos _"I had to do that."_

The group followed close to Wendy, still leading the way with Soos and Mabel close behind and Dipper being the farthest from the group, wanting to keep his distance so he could have his own space right now, it was the closest thing he had to wanting to be alone.

**O-O-O**

The twins couldn't believe it, their Grunkle was gone. All it took was one chance encounter with CSF and just like that, their last family member was gone, the only people left in the Pines family were each other, while assuming the worst for their parents that they were gone too.

Mabel couldn't stop crying after hearing the news, she didn't sob out loud to attract the attention of CSF but instead cried silently, with Soos trying his best to help Mabel through the whole ordeal, she eventually stopped crying with Soos's help, reminding her that right now the important thing is to just leave Gravity Falls, but the pain still remained inside her, her favorite Grunkle in the entire world was dead, and instead of staying inside the motel to fight off the Slegs, she was the first to run. She felt like a useless coward that fucked up everything she touched.

Dipper was more of a shut in, not wanting to express his emotions to everyone else so they wouldn't worry about him, he kept his distance from the rest of his group, but not too far so that they would get spotted, he wanted his own space to himself for a while, to try and cope with the recent loss of Stan, all he wanted now was to leave, leave this hellhole that he once called a second home, so he could just escape the painful memories that this town preserved and reminded its residents every day, just so he could finally have some form of peace that didn't involve pain and death, so he could try to forget about the guilt and regret of not being there to save his Grunkle, he just wanted to move on.

Soos had experienced loss of family long ago, when the first days of the occupation in Gravity Falls began, the Sleg government enacted a "Survival of the fittest" policy, which meant anyone deemed "unfit" for service were to be executed immediately, the policy mainly targeted the old, sick, and handicapped, Soos's grandmother was one of the victims while his cousin Reggie still stood up to the Slegs when they occupied the town, the last time Soos saw Reggie was when CSF busted down Soos's house and arrested Reggie, the cousin was never seen again. So when it came to leaving Stan behind, Soos was heartbroken, especially when Stan told him that he considered him as a son, the old man was the closest thing Soos ever had to a father and he just left him, and although he didn't show it, he had some anger pent up inside when Wendy lied to the twins about Stan's fate, although he understood why Wendy lied, it didn't mean he had to like her decision.

Wendy was just shocked at what was happening the whole time, she thought it was going to be simple, sneak inside the town, find everyone she knew, and get them out. But complications delayed the escape, Mabel killing a CSF officer, encounters with other officers, the high alert Gravity Falls was in, and the motel shootout that made the group lose a member, the simple and effective plan turned into shit really quickly, and everyone in the group was deeply affected with the loss of Stan. Wendy still kept her hope intact the most out of everyone in the group, which was probably the only thing that was keeping the group together, but that didn't mean she ignored what tried dashing her hopes, especially the motel shootout. Not only Stan had to be left behind but she killed nearly every SWAT officer that entered the motel, she knew CSF were never the nicest individuals around, but that didn't mean she enjoyed killing them, she never wanted to kill them in the first place, she only did it for the group's survival. It was either her people or theirs.

After what seemed like an eternity to the group, going past several more checkpoints and patrols from the CSF, who were using every resource they had at their disposal, the group finally reached their destination that Wendy had wanted to get to ever since this whole situation started, but it was something that everyone else in the group was confused about, the destination was the old Gravity Falls museum, which was yet another building that was abandoned by the Slegs, which still looked pretty much the same except the stone exterior of the museum was filthier, and the glass doors were stained like many other windows in Gravity Falls.

"Are we at the right place?" Asked Dipper, confused as to why Wendy led everyone here as the group ran up to the entrance.

"Yup. We're almost home free." Replied Wendy confidently, putting a hand on Dipper's shoulder. "We're gonna make it, okay? For Stan."

Dipper looked at the ground briefly before replying back with a nod, still giving a sad expression but with some hope still visible. "For Stan."

But the moment was cut short as sirens could be heard from the distance along with the whirring noise of a helicopter, Wendy turned around to see three CSF APCs coming down the road, along with a CSF helicopter close behind in the air, which made Wendy change into a more concerned expression when she noticed how fast they were driving.

"Shit." Cursed Wendy when she saw the convoy. "They found us."

The rest of the group turned to see the convoy, which shocked them for how fast the CSF tracked them, but they did leave a bundle of evidence at the motel with the firefight they had there, so it didn't take long for CSF to connect the dots and figure out where they were going. The group hurried inside the museum, not wanting to get gunned down by CSF as they barged right inside, sprinting through the spacious hallway while CSF APCs parked right outside the entrance.

While the CSF helicopter circled around the museum in the air, shining its spotlight to look for the humans, The APCs below unloaded three SWAT teams from their vehicles, two Guanians and four Geckens in each team, most of the SWAT teams were armed with sub machine guns similar in appearance to a MP5, a more longer ranged variant of the standard Sleg sub machine gun, but one Gecken and Guanian in each SWAT team were equipped with pump action shotguns, in similar appearance with a Mossberg shotgun, so SWAT really meant business this time.

When the SWAT teams assembled outside, they were waiting for orders from their team leaders, who spoke to their commander from an undisclosed location.

"Status report team leader one, over." Said the commander over the CB radio, to which a Guanian armed with a sub machine gun replied.

"Four of the fugitives are trapped inside the old museum in sector seven. Our available teams have arrived and are awaiting orders to move in, over." Answered team leader one.

"What's the status of the fifth fugitive team leader two? Over." Asked the commander.

"He was apprehended at the old motel in sector three sustaining major fractures on his right leg. Fugitive's name is Stanford Pines and is being transported to HQ for questioning, over." Replied team leader two.

"Permission to enter the museum granted. All team leaders are to advance inside and apprehend the remaining fugitives, dead or alive. Exercise caution when entering, fugitives are believed to be armed and dangerous, over." Said the commander, relaying his orders to the rest of the SWAT team leaders.

"Copy that, commander, the humans don't stand a chance. Over and out." Replied team leader one.

The SWAT teams immediately received orders from their team leaders, and complied with their orders and proceeded to advance. Team one and two positioned themselves at the front entrance while team three circled around the building for flanking maneuvers, covering the back entrance as they awaited orders from their team leaders to move inside.

"All teams, move in."

**O-O-O**

Meanwhile, The human fugitives inside were unaware of SWAT moving inside, as they continually ran through the hallways of the museum, passing through old exhibits that were dusty and filthy, not being touched since the museum closed down. The human group stopped running when they were at the middle of two hallway paths that went left and right.

"Which way do we go?" Dipper asked Wendy, still unsure why Wendy led everyone here.

"Uh… Right. We go right." Replied Wendy, just remembering where to go.

Before the group could move, they heard distant footsteps from behind and turned to see a Sleg SWAT team at the end of the hallway that spotted them.

"Fugitives found. Engage, engage." Ordered team leader one to his squad as the sub machine gunners opened fire at the humans.

"Run!" Shouted Wendy, as the group ran with her to the right hallway, narrowly avoiding getting hit by the gunfire as the Sleg SWAT team started to run after them while their team leader contacted the other teams on his CB radio.

"Targets found. We are in pursuit. Sending coordinates now." Said team leader one to the other teams as they followed their target's path.

Wendy knew they were close now, she and her group were now running down a familiar hallway, at the end of the hallway there were two hallway passes close to each other, one in front and the other pass close to the right, above the ceiling there were metal pipes that went through the passes above. While the group ran, the SWAT team from behind caught up with the group and began firing at the humans again, motivating their targets to run as fast as possible

"Take cover!" Shouted Wendy as the group ducked down behind the old exhibits for cover, with Wendy and Mabel behind cover at the left while Dipper and Soos were at cover at the right, while the Slegs slowly advanced, with the shotgunners leading ahead and sprinted towards their human foes.

Wendy noticed the shot gunners and fired her sub machine at them, knowing how devastating a shotgun at close range could be and unloaded an entire clip at the Guanian shotgunner first, riddling the Sleg with bullets before he had a chance to pull the trigger, while the Gecken shotgunner sprinted his way to cover. Dipper and Soos tried shooting him with their pistols, but showed they weren't as experienced as Wendy when the shot gunner reached cover, only being twelve meters away from the group, and pinned Soos and Dipper when the shot gunner opened fire, the spread alone was enough to keep the two ducked while the rest of the SWAT team took the opportunity to move forward while reloading, getting ever closer to their targets.

When Soos and Dipper had to reload, the Gecken shotgunner took this opportunity and sprinted towards the two companions, a risky move to take out two targets at once, the Gecken managed to get around cover and aim his shotgun at them, with Wendy being too busy shooting at the other advancing Slegs, Dipper ran up to the Gecken and grabbed the shotgun, making the Sleg point his shotgun at the ceiling as he pulled the trigger, a lucky move by Dipper as he tried to wrestle the gun away from the Gecken.

Knowing the Sleg would win the struggle, Dipper thought of a better idea to deal with the Gecken. When he saw the advancing SWAT team pointing their guns at him in the open, Dipper managed to turn the Gecken around at the last second when the advancing Slegs behind the shotgunner shot at Dipper, but managed to use his Gecken attacker as cover and make his teammates accidently kill their own squad mate, filling him with several bullet holes at his back, with Dipper managing to take the Gecken's shotgun and get back to cover before getting shot at again.

When Wendy reloaded her sub machine gun, she realized that this was her last clip for the gun, and she knew that Dipper and Soos didn't have much ammo left, the group needed to leave now, or everything they did to get to this point was for nothing.

"Guys! We need to move now! We can't take them on any longer!" shouted Wendy over the gunfire. "When I say go, we run as fast as we can down the hall!"

The group understood and waited in cover for Wendy's order, while firing back at the advancing Sleg SWAT team to keep them from getting any closer. When the Sleg SWAT team had to reload their weapons, Wendy gave her order to the group to run while dropping her sub machine gun, not wanting to use it anymore since she ran out of ammo for it, while Dipper took this opportunity to grab as many shotgun shells from the dead Gecken next to him, grabbing about ten shells and stuffing them in his back pocket before running away.

"GO! GO! GO!" Wendy continued to shout, making the group sprint their way to the hallway as the Sleg SWAT team finished reloading.

"Fugitives are on the move. Gun them down." Ordered team leader one to his squad, who opened fire at the fleeing humans.

When the group reached the end of the hallway, they ran to the right pass while avoiding the gunfire from behind and ended up in a familiar room that took the group back down memory lane.

The pass led to a large room that may have seemed ordinary to the average citizen in Gravity Falls, but it was anything but ordinary to the group, what stood out to them in this room were the large amount of eyes in the room, from actual eyes to merely pictures of them, they were all looking at one specific item in the room, a triangle shaped stone tablet with an eye carved at the center, making everyone in the group remember this room, the same room they went on one of their mystery hunts ten years ago, the same room where they found the secret society of the blind eye hiding in the town. Those were the good old days.

"I remember this place." Said Dipper, thinking back to old times. "But why are we here?"

"Because this place is our ticket out of here." Replied Wendy, who quickly went up to the stone eye and pressed against it, opening the secret entrance at the fireplace in the room that led below the museum. "Let's go, now!"

The group hurried to the entrance, not wanting to get into anymore firefights against SWAT with limited ammo, with Wendy pulling a nearby lever to close the entrance, as the secret door started to close, while Sleg SWAT teams sprinted to the fireplace just to get a brief glance at the humans before the door closed, leaving them stuck outside to figure out how to open the entrance.

"Damn." Panted Mabel, close to exhaustion from all the running. "That was too close."

While the group was safe for now, they noticed that it was quite dark inside and could barely see anything, which made Wendy take out a small flashlight she kept in her vest and turned on the light, giving the group some form of visibility.

"Let there be light." Said Wendy as she went down the stone steps, with the rest of the group following close behind. "It won't take long for CSF to figure out how to get down here, so let's go."

The group complied and followed Wendy as they went past the curtain that led to the former secret society's meeting hall, once used for their secret meetings to discuss whatever they wanted or to wipe the memories of citizens who have seen too much, now the hall was nothing more than an abandoned space, the whole underground complex was dark and dank, nothing had been moved from place ever since the society was disbanded, thanks to the efforts of the Mystery Group that was there now.

"This is how you got inside?" Dipper asked Wendy as the group walked through the meeting hall.

"That's right. I didn't tell you this before but, this isn't the first time I've sneaked inside the town." Said Wendy, somewhat surprising Dipper.

"That explains why you knew where you were going. But how did you even get in here if you didn't go through the museum?" Asked Dipper.

"Well, a while back, I found this secret entrance behind the waterfall in the town. I'm guessing that it was one of the many entrances that those blind eyes weirdoes used to travel faster." Explained Wendy as she grinned. "If you didn't notice, it's real handy."

"Can't say I don't agree." Said Dipper, grinning back to the red head.

"The Slegs had no clue about this whole thing?" Asked Mabel. "They wouldn't really forget something like this."

"That's because they're too busy dealing with the resistance." Replied Wendy. "They've been more active lately."

"So the rumors are true? There's still a resistance after all these years?" Asked Dipper, making Wendy sigh sadly.

"Wow. No one told you guys anything." Said Wendy, making the rest of the group go in an awkward silence before Wendy spoke again. "I have A LOT to tell you guys. But I'll tell you guys after we leave, we still need to get out of here and meet up with my uh… friends."

"Friends?" Asked Dipper, eyeing Wendy suspiciously at the way she said friends.

"It's a-

"-long story?" Said Dipper finished Wendy's sentence.

"Yup. A long story."

**O-O-O**

Disclaimer: I don't own Gravity Falls, but I do own the Slegs.


	11. Chapter 10

Authors note: I gots a new chappie guys, cheers! This chapter is slower than the last one, so don't expect action until later on, which is not too far away. I just want to thank everyone who reads this story, you guys are the ones who motivate me to write stories for you, especially the people who reviewed the story so thanks OMAC001, Omega Ultra, and Hylianbattlefront for reviewing and everyone else who favorited, followed, or just views this story. So I hope you enjoy the new chapter.

P.S. - Expect me to not upload a new chapter for a while, I have finals coming up earlier than expected for college so be patient for new chapters this month.

**Chapter 10: Union**

**O-O-O**

The group had been traveling down under for a while, traversing through the secret passageways that led to several other parts of Gravity Falls, whether they led inside the town itself or somewhere in the wilderness close by, it never failed to amaze everyone. Wendy was still impressed with the complex tunnel system even after several times using it to sneak inside the town, always coming in handy whenever it was needed, especially when the group needed a quick escape from CSF.

Even though the underground complex was darker than the night outside, it provided the group relief and even safety, especially to Soos and the Pine twins, who haven't felt this way ever since the Slegs came to earth, always having to be on their guard for Slegs that would hurt or even kill them, but now they could escape from that in the brief moments they walked through the tunnels, the best part being that CSF weren't right behind them trying to gun them down, they could live in these tunnels if they wanted to.

But they knew better than that, after the whole ordeal with CSF and Stan, they couldn't do that. If Stan were here, he would want Soos and the twins to keep going and follow Wendy out of here to get out of town, wherever they would go after that they didn't know, except for Wendy.

"You guys almost passed step one, by the way," Said Wendy in her old laid back attitude.

"Step one?" Asked Dipper curiously, not getting what Wendy meant.

"Leaving Gravity Falls." Replied Wendy. "After that, there's two more steps."

"Which are?" Dipper asked curiously again.

"I'm gonna warn you guys now. What we just had to go through back in town, is NOTHING compared to the journey ahead of us." Said Wendy in a more serious tone before going back to a calmer manner. "So uh, no pressure."

Dipper frowned. "Step two sounds fun already." Said Dipper in a sarcastic manner.

"If dying sounds fun, probably." Quipped Wendy in response. "Just stick with me and my friends, and we'll make it out alive."

"Friends?" Asked Soos.

"You'll see them soon enough. We just need to go through there." Said Wendy pointing her flashlight at some closed red curtains down a stone hallway. "There's some steps we need to go up and then we'll be at the waterfall entrance."

The group went past the red curtains and walked up the steps, while hearing muffled sounds of rushing water, each step they took the sound got louder until the group stopped at what looked like a dead end, a natural rock formation was blocking them from their exit, but they could still hear rushing water from the other side. Wendy then pulled down a lever on the right side of the wall, causing the rock formation to move forward slightly and slide left, revealing the inside of the waterfall as the rushing water roared louder than ever. Wendy put away her flashlight back in her vest and stepped outside with the group onto the rocky ground, and pointed at a rocky wall next to her, which appeared to be climbable.

"We got to climb this up!" Shouted Wendy over the loud sound of rushing water. "Just watch your step!"

As Wendy began climbing the rocky wall, the rest of the group looked at their new challenge and began climbing as well.

"We'll never get a break, will we?!" Mabel shouted her complaint to Dipper.

"Nope!"

**O-O-O**

It was dangerous work for the group, having to climb the tall rocky wall up the waterfall, as if running from CSF wasn't exhausting enough for them, now they had to navigate up the rocks without falling down, trying not to slip on the moist rocks while trying to hold on to stone grips and making careful jumps from narrow ledges, it was not only dangerous and exhausting, but also tedious. But the group's effort paid off well in the end, no major incident occurred during the climb and the worst that happened was a few missteps, the group was rewarded with reaching the top of the waterfall without dying, Wendy was the first to make it and stayed close to the edge to help up her companions until they all made it okay.

The rest of the group were now waiting for Dipper, who was at Wendy's reach now.

"Heads up!" Shouted Dipper as he tossed his shotgun to Wendy, catching it with ease and set it on the ground beside her, and held out her hand to grab Dipper's and lifted him up. "Thanks."

"No problem." Nodded Wendy as she handed the shotgun back to Dipper, and wore its weapon strap around himself.

The group looked at Gravity Falls from their great height to see the town one last time. The sight on top of the cliff would have been beautiful ten years ago, it would have looked over a peaceful town with forest surrounding it, but now it was nothing more than a cesspool of hate, the forests gone and the peace shattered, all because of bad luck to be chosen for an invasion. The whole town was in a state of disarray as well, the group could still hear the large amounts of sirens despite being close to the waterfall, helicopters whirred in the distance, still searching for their fugitives if they were still in town, it saddened everyone that Gravity Falls was in such a state, and even though they had to leave, it still hurt to leave all the good memories in the town.

Gravity Falls had its ups and downs even before the invasion, the residents weren't always the most normal people around, ranging from child psychics to old men with secret underground portals in their basement, and the people who were actually normal in the town had a hard time adjusting, not just because of the residents, but because of the most fascinating thing about Gravity Falls, the supernatural. The more abnormal residents of Gravity Falls were something no one would have thought was real, gnomes, manotaurs, gremoblins, and even demons, along with the mysteries that Gravity Falls had that other places in the entire world didn't. But that was in the past.

Everything special and unique about Gravity Falls was gone, in the blink of an eye, the mysteries it once held were solved just so they could be destroyed or used for more sinister purposes, and the supernatural residents that once inhabited the town truly have become nothing more than myths. So it just made it sadder for the group when they stared at their town from the great distance.

"Come on." Said Wendy, breaking the silence to get the group's attention. "We should leave before the choppers start searching here."

The group complied and followed Wendy into the woods behind them, finally leaving the town behind and never looked back.

**O-O-O**

"Where is she?" Said a dark skinned man with tattoos on his arms, looking through his binoculars at Gravity Falls, which was highly active now. "Shit is going down there."

"She'll be fine." Replied his friend next to him, who was lighter skinned and had blond hair.

"Fine? What I'm looking at doesn't look fine to me." Said the tattooed man, referring to the town he's looking at.

"Maybe she got spotted, but Wendy's a fighter. She'll be here." Replied the blond casually before turning his attention to a group of four people behind him. "Speak of the devil."

The tattooed man also turned to see the group, which was Wendy, Soos, and the Pine twins, sighing in relief at the sight and went up to Wendy with his blond friend to speak to her. "Thank god you made it out."

"I told you I could handle it." Said Wendy as she began introducing the twins and Soos to the two other figures in front. "And guess who's here."

The two figures stared at the twins in shock and realized who they were. "Doctor Funtimes!" Said the blond figure as he went up to Dipper and gave him a fist bump on his shoulder, making Dipper realize who Wendy's friends were.

"Lee? Nate?" Said Dipper, surprised to see his old friends, with Mabel sharing his reaction.

The twin's eyes didn't deceive them, it really was Nate and Lee. The last time they saw them was ten years ago when they were transferred out of town with Wendy and the rest of the old citizens. The twins could see that their two friend's appearances didn't change much over the years, with Nate having a thick beard stubble and a green wool cap, while Lee still looked clean shaven and cut his blond hair to be shorter, they still wore ordinary clothes like most people, but had the same tactical vests on like Wendy did. The two were also more heavily armed than Wendy, Nate had an assault rifle which was an AK-47, while Lee had a bolt action hunting rifle with a scope, both weapons slinged around them with a weapon strap, and although their weapons may not be of Sleg design, they served their purpose well enough.

While the twins were happy to see Nate and lee again, Dipper started to wonder what was up with Nate, Lee, and Wendy, especially after observing their equipment, and seeing his red head friend knock out two CSF officers with her bare hands, and kill SWAT officers with pinpoint accuracy with a pistol, it raised questions that he really wanted to ask the three friends. Dipper decided to wait until they were far away enough from Gravity Falls to ask his questions, which Wendy promised that she would explain to everyone.

"It's so good to see you two again." Said Mabel as she happily hugged Nate and Lee, cheering up the girl with the knowledge that not everyone she knew was dead or missing.

"Same here." Replied Nate as he looked at Soos and extended his hand. "You're Soos right? These two used to tell us how cool you are years ago, good to finally meet you."

Soos smiled at the compliment and shook Nate's hand. "Oh its nothing dude. I'm just an ordinary guy."

"No way man. Doctor Funtimes and Miss Awesome always know what they're talking about." Said Lee as he gave a fist bump to Soos instead of a handshake.

"Some courtesy you gave him." Commented Nate before Lee playfully punched his best friend in the arm.

"Same courtesy I gave your mom." Quipped Lee, making Dipper grin at the two friends.

"Good to know you two haven't changed much." Said Dipper seeing Wendy's friends act the way they did ten years ago.

"Hey, wait a minute." Said Nate, noticing something was off about the group. "There's supposed to be five of you."

This made the rest of the group go into an awkward silence, confusing Nate and Lee. "Yeah. He's supposed to be that old geezer of yours." Said Lee to the twins. "Where is he?"

Wendy spoke up softly. "He didn't make it. CSF."

This made Nate and Lee go silent and feel sympathetic for the twins before Nate spoke to them. "Damn. I'm sorry for your loss." Said Nate before he shoved his arm at Lee.

"Ow." Said Lee before understanding the message Nate gave him. "I'm sorry too, I take back what I said earlier."

"It's fine." Said Dipper calmly. "You didn't know."

"He didn't die in vain." Lied Wendy to Nate and Lee. "He fought off CSF officers to save me and Soos."

"At least he fought off CSF to save you guys." Said Lee with Nate nodding in agreement. "Wish I killed those bastards myself."

"Speaking of those bastards, what happened down there? I thought you said you were going to keep things quiet?" Nate Asked Wendy, wondering what happened in Gravity Falls.

"We ran into some… complications." Said Wendy, who didn't want to put Mabel on the spot and decided to lie. "I ran into a CSF officer and he managed to alert his buddies before I put a bullet in his head. After that, it just got worse."

Wendy then winked at Mabel without Nate and Lee noticing, which made Mabel smile back.

"You should have let us come with you." Said Nate, with Lee deciding to have his share on the matter.

"Yeah man, we could have kicked some Sleg ass." Said Lee before Wendy held up a hand in protest.

"No, no. I didn't want to risk losing you guys." Argued Wendy. "Trust me, it would have been worse if everyone was there."

Nate just sighed at Wendy's response before nodding his head understandably.

"We should get going now. I don't want to get spotted by CSF so soon." Said Wendy to the group as they began walking back into the forest behind them, and descended down the cliff through the woodlands ahead.

**O-O-O**

The group was lucky that the Slegs did not cut down the forest on the cliff they were on, mostly because the Sleg government thought that they had no reason to, and were more focused on putting more defenses in the town rather than chop down every tree they saw. This gave the perfect vantage point to Nate and Lee, who with Wendy, could get a good view at Gravity Falls without being spotted as easily by CSF, and the fact that a secret entrance to the town was close by, the Slegs could get intruders in their town without even noticing.

"Are the horses alright?" Asked Wendy, getting Soos and the twin's attention.

"Yup. I just checked them half an hour ago." Replied Nate as Mabel's eyes gleamed with excitement.

"You have horses?" Asked Mabel, eager to see the horses.

"We have horses." Repeated Lee, noticing Mabel's excitement. "It's a lot easier to climb a steep hill with horses than cars."

"Do you also have cars?" Asked Soos. "Just wondering, you know. I'm good with tools but I can't fix horses."

"With us? No. They're back at the base." Replied Lee, making Soos and the twins look at Lee in confusion.

"Base?" Asked Dipper, wondering what Lee was talking about. "You have a base?"

"Yeah. Base. Yo- you know, the base." Said Lee somewhat confused at Dipper's question, making Nate face Wendy with a raised eyebrow.

"You didn't tell them, did you?" Said Nate to Wendy, who rubbed the back of head nervously.

"Well uh, we were busy getting shot at so… no. I didn't." Wendy replied, somewhat embarrassed at the question. "But we can tell them after we get to a safe place away from here."

Dipper then frowned at Wendy, disappointed that he had to wait more. "Oh come on, now I REALLY want to know."

Wendy chuckled at Dipper's response. "Still the little mystery hunter, aren't you?"

Dipper smiled back at Wendy, despite wanting to have his question answered now instead of later, but he decided before that he would ask questions later. He then looked at Mabel who seemed genuinely happy, talking to Nate and Lee in front about the horses and even laughed with the two at their banter, warming Dipper's heart to see Mabel enjoying herself, which he hasn't seen in a long time with Mabel.

While everyone was distracted, Soos and Wendy stayed a little further back from the rest of the group to have a more private chat, mostly because Soos wanted to talk about Wendy's recent actions.

"Mabel told me what really happened back at town, while she was crying about Stan." Said Soos in a serious tone.

"What Mabel did back there, I forgave her for it. It was the heat of the moment." Said Wendy, in a somewhat less serious tone that Soos. "You want Mabel to get a shitty welcome?"

"You didn't have to lie to them about that. I may not know much about your friends, but I can tell that they would forgive Mabel in a heartbeat." Said Soos as he looked at Mabel with Nate and Lee, who were enjoying each other's company right in front of them. "And you definitely didn't have to lie about Stan."

"I'm doing it for their own protection." Replied Wendy, expressing concern for the twins. "Sometimes you have to lie to protect the people you care about."

"I know you're trying to protect them, but they're not twelve anymore." Argued Soos. "They've seen things that no twelve year old should ever see. But now they're twenty two, adults. You can't just keep lying to them and hide them from the truth."

"Look at you trying to be the moral crusader." Wendy argued back. "I understand that the truth can hurt people, I've had experience with it, and as sinful as a lie can be, I can safely say that the truth does more harm than good, no matter how old someone is, there are people that can't handle the truth."

Soos continued to argue. "They have seen people die in front of them, tortured on the streets while they walk to work, they've been beaten themselves for doing literally nothing wrong, just for the amusement of CSF, and not to mention that they've been recently shot at and almost died, all in a matter of a few hours. They-

Wendy then angrily interrupted Soos. "There's a difference between feeling pain from assholes and feeling pain from people close to you. When you feel pain from people close to you, people who care about you more than anyone else, it can break you, and in the world we live in now, the last thing you want is to destroy the bonds with the people closest to you."

Before Soos could argue the rest of his point to Wendy, Dipper interrupted the two.

"We got to the horses." Said Dipper to Wendy and Soos as they looked in front to see four horses, while Mabel stared at the horses in awe and even petted one of them.

Dipper noticed that Soos and Wendy looked tense and grew concerned for the two. "Are you guys alright?" Dipper asked worryingly.

"We're fine. We just had a little argument about something dumb." Lied Wendy in a more lax attitude as she gave Soos a quick glance and a fake smile for Dipper. "It's fine now."

"Yeah, we're good now." Said Soos, giving a quick glance back at Wendy, furrowing his eyebrows at her before going to Mabel, Nate, and Lee. "I'm going to the others now. I think I should get to know Nate and Lee anyways."

"Alright, we'll be there soon." Said Wendy as Soos went to the rest of the group close by, leaving Dipper and Wendy to themselves.

"So, what were you guys talking about?" Asked Dipper, wondering what could have set off Wendy and Soos.

"It's nothing Dip, we were talking about something dumb and I made a big deal about it. Then we argued for a bit and Soos told me off, I deserved it so don't get mad at him." Replied Wendy calmly.

Dipper then let out a yawn and starched his arms. "I think we're all just tired after what happened today, and with, you know." Dipper then lowered his head sadly when he thought back about Stan.

Wendy was about to tell Dipper about Stan's last words, but stopped herself when she realized something about the lie she told, she said that Stan died while in a struggle with a Sleg, and mentally cursed at herself for not thinking of a better lie at the moment, now unable to respect Stan's last words.

"Can I ask you a question?" Asked Wendy, which made Dipper lift his head back up.

"Ask away." Dipper responded softly.

"If you had to protect someone by not telling the truth, would you do it?" Asked Wendy, which made Dipper ponder an answer.

"It usually depends on the situation. But even then. I'm still not sure what I prefer, a lie to shield me from the painful truth, or the truth to make everything clear." Answered Dipper.

Wendy just frowned at Dipper's answer, not expecting it to be so neutral. "That's an interesting answer."

Dipper just shrugged his shoulders. "It's a tough question to answer, mostly because I've never had to do that, nor has anyone ever done that to me."

Wendy's pupils slightly dilated at Dipper's response. "Oh Dipper." Wendy said softly as she gently pulled Dipper into a hug. "I know you don't like being called adorable, but you really are."

Although Dipper felt slightly insulted at the comment, he knew Wendy didn't mean it and just blushed at her affectionate hug as he returned it. The pair then broke away from their hug when Lee called out to them.

"You two love birds done!?" Lee shouted to the pair, making them blush out of embarrassment. "Or am I interrupting your make out session!?"

"We're coming!" Replied Dipper. "And we're not making out!"

Lee then said something inaudible to Nate and Mabel, which made them break out in laughter.

Wendy then sighed as she smirked at Dipper. "Some people never change."

"I'm glad that they don't." Said Dipper smiling back at Wendy as the two walked to the rest of the group, who have already set up sleeping bags to sleep off the rest of the night, yet they chose not to build a fire for safety reasons since they were still somewhat close to the Slegs.

"CSF won't find us down here, so we can rest until morning." Said Nate as he finished setting up the rest of the sleeping bags.

"Nate and I will take turns being guard, the rest of you can get some shut eye." Said Lee as he went over to a tree to lean on. "We'll reach the base in a few days."

"That's something I'll tell you guys about in the morning. Sleep is important now." Said Wendy as she, Soos, and the twins all got into their sleeping bags for the night. "Nite guys."

"Nite." Responded everyone in the group as everyone drifted off into sleep while Nate stood guard, looking out for any potential threats that could come at them.

Wendy still had a hard time sleeping though, she stayed awake staring up at the starry sky, thinking about what Soos said to her earlier before finally drifting off to sleep, but not before mumbling to herself.

"Can't hide them from the truth."

**O-O-O**

Disclaimer: I do not own Gravity Falls, but I do own the Slegs.


	12. Chapter 11

Author's note: This chapter is quite an interesting one, it was one I was thinking if I should do or not, but I decided that I would since 1. It's an interesting point of view to see things in the eyes of the antagonist. 2. It's going to pave a way for some new characters I wanted to add in this story, and this chapter is going to introduce the main antagonist in the story along with revealing more of the Slegs as I do these Sleg orientated chapters. So enjoy this new chapter and please review. Reviews always help.

**Chapter 11: No Tolerance accepted**

**O-O-O**

While the Mystery Shack crew and friends sleep soundly throughout the night, the same can't be said for everyone else in Gravity Falls.

While the alarm in the town was lowering, the town was still on alert for its fugitives. CSF patrols were all over the town, combing every single area for their manhunt, questioning every citizen if they had seen their suspects, even going as far as to detain people who do know their fugitives, whether they had any information to give or not. It didn't help CSF that nine of their men were killed in the line of duty and two others were injured, but the worst part was that their fugitives may have escaped the town to complicate things even further, much to the displeasure of the CSF police chief of the town.

He is a Gecken Sleg, normal build just like every ordinary Gecken, wearing his black CSF uniform along with a police hat that had a badge on the top front, representing his rank to his fellow officers that he is the boss, his scales were dark yellow and had a very stern complexion on his face, which just helps his image as a police chief since he does show it. The chief had heard everything that had happened with the fugitives, making it his sole purpose to find and capture his criminal suspects, while managing every police resource he could muster in his department.

The department looked like an ordinary police station, considering that it was the old Gravity Falls police department, in the center of the chaos there was a large office area, filled with various objects that every office area would use, CSF officers in the office still had their uniforms on, but not any of their standard gear when they went out on patrol or other activities, that way they could be more focused on doing things that every police officer does best, paperwork. And after everything that's happened this night, there was a lot of paper work to fill out on their high tech computers, while at the same time new suspects were brought inside the HQ for questioning, officers in full gear walked in to deliver any suspects related to their fugitives, escorting them to their cells the room next to the office area to await questioning and interrogation. The police chief ignored the first few suspects brought in, until three CSF SWAt officers brought in a suspect that caught the chief's eye.

The CSF officers had brought in an old man, handcuffed and had a cast wrapped around his leg as he limped his way around, attracting the police chief's attention as he ordered other free officers to watch over the office area to keep things orderly. He quickly followed the three officers, and walked next to the officer close behind the other two escorting the suspect.

"Is he the captured dissident you told me about?" Asked the police chief to the SWAT officer, who had his mask and helmet removed and is revealed as a Gecken with olive green scales, with a similar stern complexion on his face, and while he wore similar armor to his SWAT officers, he had a patch on his uniform at his shoulder arm, just like every officer in CSF to indicate their rank, and this particular officer was the SWAT commander from earlier who commanded his squads against the fugitives.

"Yes sir. He's the one." Answered the SWAT commander. "As I said before, he has been identified as Stanford Pines, we caught him at the motel in sector three. He suffered a major fracture to his right leg, so we had to be delayed for a while to fix his leg for proper interrogation."

"You should have brought him here quickly, regardless of his leg." Responded the chief harshly but firm. "We cannot afford to waste any more time."

"We'll need the suspect to be in optimal condition for interrogation." Replied the SWAT commander, trying to assert the importance of his action.

The police chief just sighed as he and the commander along with the two officers escorting Stan, walked through the hallway to the interrogation room, going past several cells made for their prisoners, some were empty while others had humans stuck behind the bars, either sitting on their mattresses on the floor, or lying down after suffering one too many beatings from earlier, one of these cells had Candy and Grenda, who stared at Stan being escorted to the interrogation room at the end of the hall, shaking their head out of pity when they recognized who he was.

When the CSF officers got to their destination, they opened the door at the end of the hall which led to a small room. There was not much to it, it had a table at the end with two chairs and various items at the desk, whether to use the desk to take note or calls or just to rest at, there was also a large one sided window in the room, showing the adjoining room next to it, a room about the same size with one light bulb for lighting on the ceiling with a table at the center, one chair on the left side of the table for the suspect and a chair across the other side for the interrogator. There were also two other CSF officers inside the room that appeared to be waiting for their suspect and other visitors, one Gecken and one Guanian, as they stepped out of the way for Stan to be placed inside the interrogation room, with the escorting officers opening the door leading inside the room and placed Stan on the left sided chair, and leaving as soon as they came from the room, shutting the door behind them as they were properly dismissed by their police chief to leave the room entirely.

The two officers in front of the chief and commander looked prepared for their job, both the Gecken and Guanian were in a calm demeanor, standing attention to their superiors. While most humans would not get a good look at the Slegs underneath their masks, the Slegs themselves would always have a good look at their kin's appearance.

The average Gecken and Guanian are reptilian in appearance, they have scales like leather instead of regular skin, either yellow or green scales, and despite having no hair on their bodies, Slegs can still keep warm without hair due to similar traits with body temperature with mammals and can operate muscle functions properly to display emotions without parts like eyebrows for example to show their facial expressions, Slegs also have reptilian eyes that are colored yellow, brown, or brownish yellow, and in rare cases there are red or blue colored eyes, Slegs have three eyelids like most lizards and use their third eyelid as protection from dust and other environmental factors that could harm their eyes, and despite having several carnivorous appearances, all Slegs are omnivores.

Gecken Slegs have a slightly more round shape head than a human, but their face is flatter as well, their eyes are more round than a human's eyes, Geckens have an extremely flattened nose that barely points outward at all, and a Gecken mouth is slightly bigger than a human's mouth, with small peg like teeth, but big and sharp enough to chew food unlike most lizards, Gecken ears are external, which look like small circles at the side of their heads and blend in easily in the scales, giving off an appearance that lacks ears unless you look closely.

Guanians share traits with Geckens such as external ears and sharp teeth, but a Guanian's teeth are larger, sharper, and cone shaped, their head is more oval shaped, specifically shaped in similar appearance to an iguana's head except bigger and less rounded, Guanians mouths are larger and have stronger jaws, their face is more restricted to a regular lizard due to its skull shape, but can still see straight despite their skull shape and have snouts instead of flat noses.

While there was more to a Sleg than their appearance, the police chief and commander did not have time to take in every biological account of a Sleg, there was business to be done as they walked up to their Sleg officers.

"Chief. Commander." greeted the Gecken officer, as he and his Guanian partner formerly addressed themselves to their superiors.

"What information do you have?" Asked the chief to the interrogating officers, as the Guanian handed the police chief one of the two files that they have made for their case.

"All you need to know is in that file, Chief." Said the Gecken as the police Chief looked over the files with the commander about Stan. "When do we start?"

"Begin the procedure now. We'll start recording as soon as you're inside." Ordered the Chief as the Gecken officer went inside the room to start the interrogation, making the Guanian officer turn on the recording equipment so the chief and commander could hear what was being heard inside the interrogation room, as the two stood by the window to observe Stan and the Gecken interrogator walking inside the room with a file in hand.

"Do you think he'll talk?" Asked the SWAT commander to the CSF police chief. "I've went over the files and I think it will be a challenge due to the suspect's short term memory."

"They always talk." Responded the chief in an assuring manner. "And if he doesn't talk now, he'll talk in prison. All you need is patience and you'll get results, one way or another, he'll tell us." Said the chief as he went over the file given to him while the commander and Guanian officer look at the interrogation in front, anticipating this interrogation to be quick anyways, regardless of doubt because of Stan's condition.

**O-O-O**

"Hello Stanford." Greeted the Gecken politely to Stan, as he sat on the chair across the old man, who blankly stared at the Gecken as he gently set down his file on the desk.

The Gecken officer looked into Stan's eye's with his reptilian ones, giving Stan an intimidating but calm look before asking a question. "Do you know why you're here?"

Stan just continued to stare, not answering the question given to him by the Gecken, who continued to speak despite getting no response.

"Look, we both know that we don't have to go through all this. You can end it all here just by answering my questions." Said the Gecken calmly. "You do that, and we all go home and all of this gets blown over."

"Who are they?" Asked Stan, not really sure what the Gecken was talking about.

"Maybe this will help." Answered the Gecken, still keeping his calm demeanor as he opened the file on the table and took out four photos and showed one photo to Stan, the first picture being Wendy. "Do you know who this is?"

Stan's memory made it hard to remember Wendy, until he had a small flashback about the red head, telling her to leave him behind. "No." Answered Stan firmly, not breaking a sweat so the Gecken wouldn't pick up on anything suspicious.

"How about this one?" Asked the Gecken, showing a picture of Soos to Stan.

"No" Repeated Stan, not budging as the Gecken put the two photos down.

"Okay then, how about these two?" Asked the Gecken, showing two photos of Dipper and Mabel, which now made Stan's pupils dilate when he saw the photos.

"N-no. I don't know any of them." Answered Stan more hesitantly, which the Gecken picked up on.

"Stanford. I know you have a certain… condition that makes it hard to remember certain events. But try harder to remember." Said the Gecken as he pointed at the two photos he held up.

"I already told you I don't know. Just let me go." Said Stan, not wanting to answer the Gecken, who still kept his cool as he raised his voice firmly.

"Dipper and Mabel Pines. Twin siblings. Your great-niece and great-nephew. You can't forget your own flesh and blood that easily, and the last two photos I showed before, you know who they are too." Said the Gecken firmly. "Just tell me now and we don't need to make this more complicated than it is."

"Alright fine. They're my family, I admit it." Answered Stan, as the Gecken lowered his voice. "Those twins are my family. The fat one you showed me is Soos and the red head girl is Wendy. They're family friends."

"That wasn't too hard, was it? Keep answering my questions and I promise you that you can leave." Said the Gecken, putting away the photos in his file and asked another question. "Do you know where they are now?"

Stan paused for a few seconds as his memory loss got the better of him and responded. "Who?"

"Dipper and Mabel Pines. And your friends Soos and Wendy. You told me this earlier." Said the Gecken politely, knowing that this time Stan just lost his memory and that his answer would jumpstart his memory again, which it did. "Where are they now?"

"I don't know."

**O-O-O**

The police chief sighed at the interrogation going on. "This is getting us nowhere. He won't tell us anything here."

"Did you really make a conclusion that fast?" Asked the SWAT commander. "Give it a chance."

"You read the file, right?" Asked the police chief. "You must have read about the last interrogation we gave Stanford."

The interrogation the police chief mentioned was when Stan was arrested by CSF for withholding information about the portal they discovered under the Mystery Shack ten years ago, which was now the Black Citadel. When CSF first interrogated him, Stan wouldn't budge, the officers used every method they had but it wouldn't make him talk, which is why they had to send him to some prison not far from Gravity Falls to use harsher methods to make him talk, then Stan talked. And even after being broken physically and mentally by CSF, Stan was still as stubborn as ever, especially now since it involved the people he cared about most.

"I remember. He had to be sent to the prison for "intensive interrogation methods." Replied the commander as he shook his head. "Poor bastard."

"It was his fault that he wouldn't tell us valuable information we needed, and even now, Stanford is still the same person ten years ago. He just refuses to talk unless he gets a thousand volts of electricity." Replied the police chief harshly, having no sympathy for Stan. "Besides, he's a criminal AND a human. Damn apes always commit crimes."

The commander just nodded in agreement, yet despite sharing his dislike for humans with the police chief, he still wasn't a big fan of torture, so he moved on to ask a different question.

"Anything interesting about our dissidents aside from Stanford?" The commander asked the police chief, who just finished looking through the file. "I just skimmed through the file briefly, detective work is something your people do more than me and my people."

The police chief began explaining any valuable information about the suspects. "There's not too much about Dipper and Mabel Pines, our prime suspects for the murder. They've never had any serious encounters with us until now, Mabel being the one that pulled the trigger and killed the first officer, while her brother Dipper was merely an accomplice, same goes for their friend Jesus Ramirez so nothing too interesting. And we have Stanford in our custody so don't worry about him."

"What about this Wendy Corduroy? She seems to be the most interesting suspect out of all of them." Asked the commander, mostly interested in the information about Wendy

"Ah yes, her. It took a while but we managed to dig up a lot of information about her." Said the police chief as he began talking about what he read about Wendy. "Corduroy used to reside in OA-243 with us, but she got transferred eight years ago to LAA-001, or as the humans used to call it, Los Angeles, a hellhole of a city."

"Los Angeles? I used to work there before they transferred me here, best thing that ever happened me." Said the commander, who felt a chill down his spine when he remembered how horrible it was to work there. "I lost a lot of men there."

"Then you must know that there's a high concentration of rebels in that city, the very same rebels that Corduroy is part of." Said the police chief, raising the commander's interest in Wendy even more and stood silent to let the chief continue. "Corduroy is a well-known rebel leader who's led several raids against supply convoys and outposts, she's also a very capable fighter who's able to take on several men at once. The dead SWAT team at the motel is proof of her combat skills. Currently, there's a bounty on her head that's worth one hundred thousand imperial credits, her latest raid raised her bounty when she led a group that took out a weapons convoy that contained the latest weaponry for the military, giving the rebel resistance a major advantage in future combat situations."

"And a human like that came all this way by herself for the remaining suspects? She's sounds insane." Said the commander, surprised at how infamous Wendy is. "Are there any records of her before she became a rebel?"

"Not much. She was only a legal citizen in LAA-001 for six months before a major incident occurred with her and her family with CSF, which most likely motivated her to join the rebels in the first place." Said the police chief as he was about to tell the SWAT commander what the incident was.

But he was quickly interrupted when someone opened the door from the hallway. The police chief expected it to be one of his officers, but instead it was a Gecken that wore a black suit with a red tie and black tinted shades, it was exactly what everyone in the room was not expecting.

"You two, Come with me. Governor Xon requests your audience." Ordered the Gecken, which took the police chief and SWAT commander by surprise, they didn't expect one of the governor's bodyguards to barge in and order them around.

"Can the governor wait for a while? We're in the middle of something." Said the SWAT commander, not wanting to miss out on anything important in the interrogation just in case.

"He wants both of you in his office, NOW. He's not in the mood for patience." Responded the bodyguard sternly.

The chief turned to the Guanian officer by the desk. "Pay attention to the interrogation. Take down notes for anything useful that's not in the files. I'll be back as soon as possible."

The Guanian officer nodded as the police chief and the SWAT commander followed the governor's bodyguard out of the room, thinking fearful thoughts because they knew why Xon wanted to see them.

**O-O-O**

As the CSF police chief and SWAT commander were led out of the building, they were escorted by the Governor's bodyguard to a black armored limousine, it was slightly larger and shorter than a regular limousine, with black tinted windows that were also bulletproof like the rest of the car. The governor's bodyguard opened the door for the two CSF Slegs to enter and closed the door as soon as they were inside, the bodyguard going to the front with the driver and told him to drive to their destination.

The two Slegs eased themselves in the comfy backseats, made with the finest leather that the Governor could afford, and considering the Governor's position, he could afford A LOT of things that the two CSF Slegs would never get in their lifetimes. Xon is not just the appointed governor of Gravity Falls, he's the governor of the entire earth, a planetary governor. Every town or city that's left standing on Earth has their own governor to manage them, and because Xon is the planetary governor, he has total authority over everyone living on earth, and what better place for the planetary governor's office to be than the destination that the limousine was going to, the Black Citadel. It was not only a research center, located underground the Black Citadel, it was also the main capital of the entire planet and the main residence of Xon, a fitting place to live in considering his status.

After a few minutes of driving, the limousine arrived at the gates outside Gravity Falls that led inside the Black Citadel's military base surrounding it and drove inside as soon as the gates opened, just to see the military base bursting in activity. All kinds of military units were being mobilized and looked like they were preparing to leave town for a new military campaign, most likely against the rebel resistance to wipe out any rebel presence that they found, which at this rate was routine. The limousine eventually reached the gates that lead inside the Black Citadel, the towering structure that's tall enough to reach the clouds, and the limousine parked right by the large doors that opened its doors inside the Black Citadel. The Governor's bodyguard then opened the limo door for the two CSF Slegs, who followed the bodyguard inside the Black Citadel as the large doors behind the three Slegs closed.

The three Slegs were walking down a large spacious hallway, the interior of the Black Citadel had a smooth metallic feel from the inner metal plating of the building, and the interior was more of a blackish blue than the exterior which was darker, and had a lack of furnishings for what was supposed to be some kind of lobby, but that was mostly because they were on the ground floor of the building, not much was here except other passageways that led to other hallways to other elevators that the scientists use to go underground for the portal the Slegs had been working on, while the elevator at the end of the hallway the three Slegs were at was the only elevator that led to the top of the Black Citadel to Xon's office.

The three Slegs got on the elevator and the Governor's bodyguard pressed the button that would reach the floor to Xon's office, as the police chief and SWAT commander looked out the elevator window to see the town grow smaller with every height the elevator climbs, they were not looking forward to meeting Xon in person.

Xon had a reputation for impatience and intolerance to anyone under his rule, anyone who does even the slightest thing wrong will have to face Xon's wrath for whatever they have done, whether it's because they failed to successfully complete a task or something meaningless like coughing in Xon's general direction, they would receive some kind of punishment for it, that's most likely where the CSF's attitude came from, especially since Xon is the one who created the CSF, but the most dangerous thing about Xon is his influence and words. As malevolent as Xon can be, he is also charismatic and has a way with words, able to convince even the largest and disorientated crowds to follow under his banner and listen to anything he says, which is how he got his position as planetary governor, along with a few political assassinations to guarantee the odds to be in his favor.

The elevator reached its destination and opened its doors, revealing large front doors that led to Xon's office along with two more of the governor's bodyguards, both Guanians dressed in the same suits, as the Gecken bodyguard walked in front of the two CSF Slegs to escort them. The Gecken bodyguard nodded to his fellow coworkers as a form of greetings that the other guards returned to him, and knocked on the front doors for Xon's permission to enter.

"Enter." Called out a voice from behind the doors, making the Gecken bodyguard open the doors to Xon's office and let the two CSF Slegs walk in themselves and closed the door behind them.

Xon's office was fancier than the two CSF Slegs had thought, despite retaining the same metallic blackish blue plating in the room, it was well-furnished with luxury items, the floors, walls, and ceiling were well tiled with lighter matching colors to the blackish blue plating everywhere else in the Citadel's interior, there was a smooth wooden desk that looked new at the far end of the room with all sorts of accessories that came with an official's desk, with a comfy leather chair made with fine cushioning fit for a king behind the desk that belonged to the governor, while two smaller versions of the chair were across the other side of the desk facing the governor's chair, behind the desk was a large set of high tech monitors that acted as Xon's personal computer, attached to the middle of a small wall section in the center while the rest of surrounding wall area were large windows that overlooked Gravity Falls from below, which made a very impressive view, and on the walls around were expensive paintings of various artwork to add to the personal comfort of Xon, all of the luxury gave off a classical feel despite the rest of the Citadel having the exact opposite of that feeling.

The two CSF Slegs did not care much about the fine decorating however, as they saw a figure by the windows at the left, the figure was looking out the windows at the view with his back turned, the two Slegs knew it was the governor, who looked like he wore a black cape with gold colored edges covering the back of his body and was holding a glass of red wine on his right hand.

"Governor Xon." Greeted the police chief formally as he and the commander pounded their right fist on their chests and bowed their heads down to properly greet Xon. "We are humbled by your-

"Sit." Said Xon sternly, his voice sounded deep and intimidating, giving the two CSF Slegs a bad feeling as they took their seats at the two chairs.

They could see a bottle of fine red wine on Xon's desk that was half empty, indicating that he had been unhappy for quite some time as Xon took a final sip of his fine, finishing it and walked over to his desk, sitting down on his chair as he put the wine glass and bottle aside to look at the two CSF Slegs in the eye.

Xon was not either species of Sleg the humans regularly encountered, Xon's skull was slightly taller and thinner than a human's, the shape of his skull was oval in height length was about the same as a human's, Xon also had a flattened face like a Gecken's with his scales being brown, but Xon had a slightly outward nose than a Gecken's with slightly larger brownish yellow eyes and a mouth slightly bigger than a Gecken's, with his teeth being normal sized and a combination of a cone and pin shape, and his external ears were the same as an ordinary Sleg, but he was not Guanian or Gecken, his kind were called Bassilns.

Xon also had an interesting appearance as a governor, his standard clothes were had a combination of mostly black and gold, the inner cloth of his cape was crimson red with a sash around his chest colored crimson with gold at the edges, the right side of his chest had several imperial honors as the Slegs called it, gold medals in various shapes that symbolized the achievements that Xon had accomplished as governor, he also had some kind of partial carapace amour colored gold, such as gold colored pauldrons that cover his shoulders, golden greaves that covered his lower legs, and gold colored gauntlets that covered his hands and lower arms, Xon had a full set of amour that could protect him well, but wore parts of the amour to show himself as an imposing and authority figure to listen to, and it worked well for the two CSF Slegs he looked at, giving the two a piercing look that was part of Xon's natural intimidation as he spoke to them.

"Do you know why I called you two here?" Asked Xon, in a calmer manner that sent chills down the two Sleg's spines.

"Yes governor. We know why." Answered the police chief, stuttering his answer out as Xon folded his hands and moved his head forward.

"Then you must also know that I do not appreciate failure in this department." Said Xon sternly as he began to raise his voice. "Do you know how serious this situation is?"

"Of course Governor. And my department is-

"Is not doing their job well enough." Interrupted Xon, preventing the police chief from finishing his sentence. "How did your department manage to let one of those apes break in MY town, and let it get away with more of its filth ridden kind?"

"Sir, I-

"And do you know what broke inside this town?" Interrupted Xon again, his voice now lowered back to normal as he shifted backward into his chair.

"Wendy Corduroy, sir. A well-known rebel." Answered the police chief, while the SWAT commander stood silent, not wanting to speak unless spoken to.

"No. Not a rebel, a terrorist." Corrected Xon. "You let a terrorist inside this town to cause chaos, and that chaos has cost you the lives of nine men, almost killing two others, and has damaged my reputation as governor."

Xon then stared right into the police chief's eyes as he spoke, whose pupils were dilating out of fear. "You know I cannot let this slide."

"Governor, I swear to you that I will solve this problem. My men have captured one of the humans trying to flee, he may know some valuable information. "Said the police chief, trying to assure to Xon that he can handle it. "I've also taken the liberty of relaying orders to my men to search for the fugi… terrorists."

Xon then focused his attention to the SWAT commander, who had even more fright build up inside him. "You haven't said a word since you got here. Do you have anything you want to share?"

"I… am ashamed of this humiliation and I should take my punishment as my due." Said the commander frightfully, making Xon get up from his chair and walk next to the commander, putting a hand on his shoulder and chuckled.

"You see this, chief? This is someone who is willing to accept humility instead of telling me empty promises." Said Xon as he patted the commander on his shoulder. "And why do think that you should be punished?"

"Because I lost my men under my command. I let the terrorists escape because of my incompetence and lack of leadership skills that have also affected me from the past. I deserve discipline so that I reflect upon my previous actions to better myself as a righteous officer of the law." Said the commander, almost in a machine like tone with hints of cowardice in his voice.

"You need to be more like the commander here, chief. Then you can actually learn something for once." Said Xon in an almost cheerful way as he made the commander stand up and walked him over to the window while the police chief just watched the two. "Now look at the view down there. Is it not the most beautiful sight on this earth?"

The commander looked at the sights below to see the town, which still looked like it was on alert from earlier.

"It's beautiful." Said the commander, not wanting to say the wrong thing in front of Xon. "I've never seen such a sight in my life."

Xon then frowned at the commander's answer and in a split second, he grabbed the commander by his tongue and unsheathed a hidden dagger, using it to slice off the Gecken's tongue as it fell to the floor, the Gecken tried to let out a scream of pain but Xon grabbed him by the neck and forced him to kneel down on his knees, holding his head up so that the red blood that leaked out of his mouth filled his mouth, preventing him from breathing and effectively, making the commander drown in his own blood.

"You failed, commander." Said Xon, raising his voice again to speak as the commander gurgled from his own blood. "You were so close to passing your loyalty check, the same kind that I told you should always enforce. But then you had to lie to me when you could clearly see the truth in front of you. The view is absolute shit!"

All the police chief could do is stare in shock at what he was seeing right now and let Xon finish his business.

"You could have lived to serve another day. Sure, I still would have cut off your tongue to silence your groveling, but instead of choking on your own blood to drown in your own incompetence, you would have been demoted to gate guard to spend a boring and prosperous life of bureaucracy that's impossible to fuck up." Said Xon as the commander was close to drowning in his blood as Xon said his final words. "But you failed."

Xon then let go of the commander, his imp body fell to the ground, his blood spilled from his mouth onto the floor as Xon sighed.

"What a mess." Said Xon as he walked over the commander's body to sit back down onto his chair and quickly glanced over to the dead body before looking back at the chief, talking in a more calm and casual manner as he pointed what he didn't like about killing the commander in cold blood. "Seriously, look at this mess. There's blood on the floor, blood on the windows, and blood on my fucking dagger, and it was a gift I received when I was appointed governor of the backwater planet."

"It is a great shame." Said the police chief softly, still shocked at what he saw, which Xon noticed.

"Don't you worry, I'm not going to cut off any body parts. I have something better in mind." Said Xon as he laid back on his chair to get more comfortable. "You are to be sent to prison with your little ape friend you arrested, my bodyguards will see you out."

"What about my men? They need-

"Already taken care of. A new chief has already replaced you as soon as you left, CSF will now work in joint operations with the military to fix your fuck up." Interrupted Xon as the police chief got up to see himself out, walking away disgraced, humiliated, and angry all at once. "Oh, and tell the guards to clean up the mess on my floor, I don't need the stench of corpses in my office."

The former police chief just walked to the front doors as they opened and was escorted out of the office, while telling them about the body in Xon's office. Xon got up and poured himself another glass of wine and went over to the window on the other side, staring at the view he saw while two bodyguards lifted the SWAT commander's body out of the office, as he made a venomous promise to himself.

"One day, this will ALL burn."

**O-O-O**

Disclaimer: I do not own Gravity Falls, but I do own the Slegs and Xon.


	13. Chapter 12

Authors note: So here's a new chapter… oh boy. I got something special I've planned for quite a while. Slegs may be the main antagonists of this story, and you got a taste of Xon in the last chapter, but I guarantee that there really are some things just as bad as Slegs, if not, worse in other ways. I won't go too much in detail this chapter, but I will in the future sometime. There's also some stuff about the rebellion at the first half, but you'll learn more about that later on as well. Other than that, enjoy the new chapter and review.

P.S. - Today is my B-day, so it makes me happier that I uploaded a chapter today. It's my personal birthday gift.

**Chapter 12: The Journey begins**

**O-O-O**

_Gravity Falls, Oregon, June 28, 2022_

_So much has happened yesterday. In one moment, it was another typical day in hell, the next moment, I was breaking out of that same hell with an old friend/former crush, Wendy, Who I haven't seen in eight years._

_To think that all of this started because Mabel got into a tussle with a CSF officer, only for me to step in and almost get myself killed. Thankfully, my sister killed him before he could choke me out, it wasn't an easy thing to do though, taking another person's life, even if it was CSF. I still don't know why Mabel even agitated the officer, but I know that whatever the reason was, it had something to do with what happened at work yesterday. I'll ask her what happened when we get to somewhere safer than the wilderness, most likely at the "base" that I heard about last night. _

_I still wish Stan was with us. He was the only one that didn't make it out, the one that I felt should have been the first to leave. Stan's been through a lot over these years, and to think when he could have finally had some peace, he just… died. I didn't see it happen, Wendy told me that, and although it's not usually the best choice to trust what someone says instead of seeing what they're talking about for yourself, I knew that I could trust Wendy. She's always been honest to me before she was sent away eight years ago, and she's still honest now. Besides, I didn't want the image of my Grunkle's corpse to be the last thing I remember him by._

_After Stan's death, the rest of us managed to get out of the town by using a secret tunnel complex by the Society of the Blind Eye, this weird cult we disbanded ten years ago, crazy right?_

_Gravity Falls always did amaze me, even now it still had some tricks up its sleeve, so it was hard to leave the town despite the current state it's in now. But I have to move on from it. To stay strong and look ahead, because I have a new journey to follow now, and I have this feeling that it's going to be the most scariest and interesting thing that will happen in my life._

_I'll try to update this journal more often. If I don't update it by tomorrow, that means I'm probably dead. Hopefully I'm wrong._

_End of entry._

_-Dipper Pines._

**O-O-O**

Dipper closed his journal when he finished writing, luckily he could write something since he always kept a pencil in his pocket, and he didn't know why he had that habit, but it was useful to him when he wanted to write down his thoughts. Dipper was the first one to be awake, mostly because he had a hard time sleeping this night, not really used to sleeping out in the forest instead of a bed at the house he and his sister had been staying at before. So he kept himself busy by writing down the entry he just finished, besides, it was early morning anyways.

The sun had just risen and was actually visible this time around, today was only partially cloudy so the sun would have a chance to shine today and looked like it was going to stay that way for the rest of the day. Considering that the sun had just risen, Dipper guessed that it was probably seven o clock right now, which sounded like a good time to leave, and everyone got enough sleep to last the day. Dipper turned to look around his surroundings as he put his journal away into his hoodie to see Lee still standing guard, sitting on a nearby tree stump with his rifle in his arms, but Dipper heard snoring from the blond so he was not very guard like. Nate was lying against the tree close by the horses, who were also awake with Dipper, their reigns still tied on the low tree branches but they seemed to have a good night's rest despite that.

Dipper then noticed Wendy starting to wake up, and started to exit her sleeping bag across from Dipper.

"Morning sunshine." Said Dipper, making Wendy smirk in response.

"Up already?" Asked Wendy as she stretched her arms and yawned.

"No one else was up." Answered Dipper, as Wendy looked at Nate and Lee and sighed.

"Wake up the others. We should also have some breakfast before we go too." Said Wendy as she got up and walked to the horses.

Dipper then got up and went to wake up the others, Mabel being the first since she was the closest to him, while Wendy went through the saddle bags of the horses to take out some cans of food for the group to eat.

"Mabel?" Said Dipper softly, slightly shaking Mabel to wake up.

That was all it took to wake his sister up, as Mabel opened her eyes to see her brother next to her. "I'm supposed to wake you up first." Said Mabel, drowsily smiling at Dipper.

"Well, not this time." Said Dipper smiling back.

Soon, everyone else started to wake up themselves and Wendy passed each person with a can of beans and a spoon, which made the twins frown at the sight, since these beans reminded them what happened yesterday. While everyone else was buy eating, Wendy took notice of the twin's expression as they stared at the can of beans they had in their hands.

"What?" Asked Wendy, with her mouth full of beans as she chewed. "You don't like beans?"

"You could say that." Responded Mabel, sadly staring at her can as did Dipper with his, which confused Wendy.

"It's all we have to eat." Said Wendy as she swallowed her fill. "But we should have enough to last the trip."

"You could have had some more variety." Said Dipper, who now started to eat the beans since it was either that or starve.

"Well, tough shit." Said Wendy more sternly. "Besides, beans are not so bad."

Dipper looked over to Mabel, who nodded in response and began eating her breakfast as well, which was surprisingly better than the beans she had for breakfast yesterday, she assumed it was because the food that the CSF distributes always had a more bitter taste, mostly due to the fact that they gave citizens the oldest cans of food they had, all for the sake of keeping the better food to themselves. Once everyone was done with their fill, they cleaned up and rolled up the sleeping bags, strapping them back on the horse's saddles to prepare for their journey ahead.

The group had four horses, two with bay coat colors, one with a chestnut coat color, and the last with a grey coat color, each one carrying supplies on their saddles and are in perfect health for travel, they were truly majestic creatures. Everyone loved the horses, but Mabel loved them the most, she had always wanted to see them up close, and now she was going to ride one, she felt like a kid again.

"Let's mount up." Ordered Wendy as everyone picked their horse to ride.

Nate and Lee chose the two bay horses to ride, while the rest of the group had to share the last two with another person. Soos went with Mabel to the chestnut horse to ride, mostly by Mabel's insistence since that horse was her favorite, letting Soos take the reins and Mabel rode behind Soos, While Wendy and Dipper chose the grey horse, with Wendy taking the reins and Dipper in back.

"You know how to ride a horse? "Wendy asked Soos, who just shrugged in response.

"Nope. But it shouldn't be too-

Soos then accidently pulled the reins too hard and made the horse rise on its back legs as it whinnied, making Wendy smirk at Soos's overconfidence as he barely managed to hold on.

"I meant to do that." Said Soos, getting the horse under control while Wendy stifled a giggle. "This is why I prefer driving."

"Well, riding a horse is kind of like driving. You just move the reins in whatever direction you want the horse to go. The harder you whip the reins, the faster the horse goes, and if you want the horse to stop, just pull back the reins. Just don't do it too hard or else the horse will throw you off." Said Wendy, explaining horse riding 101 to Soos.

Soos nodded and thanked Wendy for the advice, who made her horse go forward as the others followed close behind, ready to ride ahead to where they needed to go.

**O-O-O**

The group was now riding along an empty road, no cars, no people, and no Slegs. It was peaceful too, the morning sun had now completely risen, birds were still chirping their songs, and there was no CSF to ruin it for once. Dipper, Mabel, and Soos hadn't experienced this for ten long years, the calm mornings for them usually involved working 24/7 without any sort of break, always being harassed and beaten, all for the sake of amusement for CSF officers, but they could leave that behind now.

"So Wendy. What's all this about?" Asked Dipper, eager to clear things up with Wendy about his earlier questions. "The gear, the base, everything."

Wendy looked behind Dipper and prepared to answer his question, taking a deep breath to calm her nerves. "Okay, you guys deserve to know after all this, so… Nate, Lee, and I are part of the Freedom Fighters, a resistance movement against the Sleg government."

"Well… shit. I kind of thought that was the case but, the resistance was only talked about in rumors." Said Dipper, somewhat surprised that there was actually a resistance movement after all these years. "They don't tell us much at Gravity Falls."

"I can see that." Said Wendy, turning back to the road ahead. "But the rumors are true. There's still people out there that stand up for freedom, and we're part of it."

"Are we part of it too? Because I wouldn't mind that." Asked Mabel, wondering if being saved by Wendy and going to the rebels meant her, Dipper and Soos joined them.

"Not really. You need to take an oath to swear your allegiance or something like that, IF we decide to accept you." Answered Wendy, whose answer made Mabel disappointed. "But the Sleg government most likely branded you as rebels, so there's that."

"I hope we get to actually join. We can do cool rebel stuff like make graffiti and talk back to the man." Said Mabel enthusiastically to her brother, still reluctant to join the rebels. "We could be like, the most badass twins ever. Solving mysteries and kicking butt."

"While trying to avoid getting our brains blown out by the Slegs." Responded Dipper, who did not sound as enthusiastic as Mabel. "Doesn't sound very badass to me."

"You get used to being shot at." Said Wendy, assuring that the bad part wasn't getting shot. "Besides, the resistance has your back."

"That's another thing. How strong are you guys anyways?" Inquired Dipper, curious to know more about the resistance movement.

"Well for starters, we can't take on the Sleg military directly with the resources we have right now, so we use stealth and guerrilla tactics against them, that way we can hit them when they least expect it." Explained Wendy. "Using the environment as cover and camouflage or hit and run attacks against their forces are a few examples."

"But how do even get the resources to do any of that?" Asked Dipper curiously.

"We mostly scavenge for them. A lot of our resources are things that the Slegs overlook and consider them useless because they don't need it, but we have plenty of skilled members that know a thing or two on how to make seemingly useless things, well, useful. Such as scrap metal, which we use to create most of the equipment we need." Answered Wendy. "There's also all kinds of military equipment that belonged used to belong to the U.S. military that we saved from destruction, such as guns, radios, body armor, and even vehicles. That way, we can go for more risky targets."

"Risky?" Asked Mabel. "How risky?"

"Does raiding supply convoys against the military sound risky?" Quipped Lee. "It may risky, but it pays off since we can get our hands on Sleg technology. In fact, why don't you tell them about the last raid Wendy?"

Wendy smiled as she remembered the victory of her last raid. "Oh yeah. A few weeks ago before we got here, I led a raid against Sleg convoy. The info I got said that the supplies were newly issued weaponry for the Sleg soldiers to use, a few explosions later and we got the entire shipment and never lost a single person."

"That's pretty hardcore dude." Said Soos, impressed with the guts that the rebels had. "Crazy, but hardcore."

"It sounds like it isn't your first raid." Assumed Dipper, mostly due to Wendy's lax attitude about the raid.

"I'm pretty famous in the resistance movement and the Sleg government for this kind of stuff. I do a lot of aggressive tactics for the Freedom Fighters, so I gained a reputation of being a badass, at least to the rebels." Said Wendy before going into a more serious tone. "The Sleg government thinks differently."

"How so?" Asked Dipper.

"They consider the Freedom Fighters terrorists for what we do, and have branded us that way as a method of control over people. They've also heard of my exploits and are so intimidated by them, they put a bounty on me and gave me a nickname." Said Wendy as she shook her head when she remembered the name. "They like to call me, "the Red Devil."

Dipper chuckled at the name, not believing that the same government that caused him and his loved ones pain, would actually be this intimidated by one person. "Red Devil?" That's ridiculous."

Wendy frowned and sighed when she heard her nickname. "It's really stupid, and I think they call me that because I'm ginger, so it's offensive too, and let's not forget the bounty on my head either."

"I think they're just jealous of you." Said Mabel in her cheerful tone to Wendy.

"Then the Slegs are jealous of every Freedom Fighter." Agreed Lee. "We all have a bounty on our heads. I think it was about a thousand credits for each one of us dead, but Wendy has at least eighty thousand on her."

"Goddamn Wendy! You must have really pissed them off." Exclaimed Dipper, shocked at how high the price on his friend's head was.

"Relax. The bounties don't matter to the military, it's the mercenaries that I'm worried about." Said Wendy with a grim expression. "Hopefully, we don't encounter them along the way."

"Mercenaries? I thought a chance encounter with the military would be the worst thing to happen." Said Dipper, making Wendy sigh.

"Like I said before, Gravity Falls is nothing compared to what we'll see along the way."

**O-O-O**

A few miles ahead the road that the human group was travelling on, there was a CSF APC driving on the road to their destination, this particular squad had been ordered by their new police chief to secure a road tunnel underneath a mountain, not only to cut off escape to the fugitives CSF were hunting down with military assistance, but to also investigate the tunnel itself for any signs of a missing convoy. There was supposed to be a convoy of new citizens coming from Los Angeles through the tunnel to Gravity Falls, but the last contact that anyone had with the convoy was under the tunnel before they went dark about two days ago, so it was up to the CSF SWAT team, two Guanians and four Geckens, to investigate and search for anyone part of the convoy in the tunnel.

When the APC got to its destination and parked by the edge of the tunnel entrance, there was already something off, the tunnel was completely dark on the inside, no lights were on and all that could be seen was the furthest corners of the tunnel lighten up by the sun, revealing a mass of abandoned and broken cars which looked like they were cleared out of the way to the sides of the road inside to make room for passing vehicles, the Slegs never bothered to clean up the car pileup, but they wouldn't just turn off every light in the tunnel.

As the SWAT team got out of the APC and geared up, they formed up at the tunnel to prepare for their search.

"Listen up team." Said a Guanian team leader. "We have orders to secure this area to prevent possible escape routes for the fugitives, but first we are to move in the tunnel to search for a missing convoy. We don't know what happened to it, but last contact with the convoy was made when they went inside this tunnel, so it's up to us to find anyone still around and solve this case. Let's move."

The SWAT team cocked their guns, all armed with long range sub machine guns while one Gecken and Guanian were armed with a pump action shotgun, and procceded to enter the dark tunnel, turning on their flashlight attachmets under their guns while the APC's driver opened the door and locked his APC, leaning on the front door as he took out a cigarette to smoke.

The SWAT team continued to advance deeper inside the tunnel, shining their flashlights to reveal anything important for their mission, yet there was nothing besides the empty cars along the far sides, no person, no convoy, not even a body, just a long road that led to more darkness and silence. The silence was what got to the Slegs the most, the only noises that could be heard were the sound of their footsteps and their vocoder chatter whenever they spoke, but there was no other noise to be heard.

Eventually the team found the convoy they were looking for, three armored trucks that looked similar to a SWAT APC but were larger and longer, and were designed to hold as many people as possible, yet when they got closer to the convoy, it opened more questions.

There were signs of a firefight in the convoy's surrounding area, there were bullet casings on the floor along with the guns that they were fired from, CSF sub machine guns like the SWAT teams, there was also dried red blood splatters from multiple places on the floor and the trucks, and the trucks looked like they were pounded on their sides with noticeable dents and scratches, the windows of the vehicles were either cracked or shattered, and yet there were no bodies to be found in what looked like an intense fight.

The SWAT team investigated further, looking more closely at the firefight to notice some strange discrepancies. The damage done on the transport trucks did not look like it was caused by gunfire, closer examination showed that it was caused by someone or something banging on the vehicles from the outside, the back of the trucks had the doors torn off, with no signs of blood from the back at all, while the blood splatter on the ground looked like it was not caused by gunfire, so rebels couldn't have been the cause of this. Then the team leader noticed something off about some of the blood on the ground, bending down to take a closer look, the team leader noticed that not only there was red blood, but there was also traces of green blood with some of the red blood splatter, and the team leader noticed the same pattern of red and green blood across from the convoy, possibly what the convoy's guards were shooting at, yet those bodies were gone too.

"Where are they?" Asked one of the SWAT officers to his team leader. "We should have found someone by now."

"Or something." Said the team leader, standing up to face his fellow officer. "We may have a bigger problem than rebels."

Before the officer could respond, loud bloodcurdling screeches could be heard from deep within the tunnel, getting the entire team's attention to see where the noise came from, pointing their weapons and shining their lights at the noise's direction.

The lights shined on figures that appeared to be the missing people from the convoy, human and Sleg alike, but there was something seriously off about them. They appeared to be shambling towards the SWAT team, twitching at the sight of the bright lights, as the figures screeched even louder than before out of rage and fury, the figures came in the numbers of dozens, most of them being humans while a small handful were Slegs, gathering in a large horde as they shuffled closer to the SWAT team.

"STOP! OR WE WILL OPEN FIRE!" Shouted one of the SWAT officers, the whole team pointing their weapons at the horde.

The horde did not listen to the order and continued to get closer to the SWAT team, who got a better look at the horde in front, confirming the team leader's fears when he saw what they looked like.

Most of the horde's clothing was torn and bloodied, some had wounds that were bloody gashes or scratches, those wounds may have been caused by the dark red three inch claws on each of their hands, some still covered in fresh or dried red blood, and their skin was pale and stained with red blood which covered the rashes all over their skin, they had bloodshot eyes staring at their supposed saviors, revealing their yellow sharpened blood stained teeth as they growled and hissed viciously and began to screech once again, this time it was more bloodcurdling than before and signaled the horde to charge at the Slegs.

"ENGAGE! ENGAGE!" Ordered the team leader, as the team opened fire at the charging horde.

While the team hit their targets accurately, only a few of the horde were knocked down and killed when a few bullets penetrated their skulls, revealing the weakness that now the entire SWAT team knew, they knew at this point what they were dealing with, and that they found out too late, for the horde did not take long to close in on the team, all they could do is accept their fates and face their bloody end as they unloaded every bullet they had.

The last thing the driver outside the tunnel could hear were the pain driven screams of his Sleg kin as he quickly ran inside his APC and turned around, leaving his former passengers to their fates as he also heard the bloodcurdling screams of the horde, knowing that there was only one kind of terror behind all this.

An old foe.

**O-O-O**

Disclaimer: I do not own Gravity Falls, but I do own the Slegs and the new enemy that I will go in further detail later on.

Hint: They may sound like zombies, but they're far worse than that.


	14. Chapter 13

Authors note: This story is not dying anytime soon. Now that I have no college for now, I can actually spend some time with these chapters. I also decided to add some new characters from the Sleg point of view to get a different perspective of the world I created, and to show that not all the Slegs are assholes which is what a lot of people think about them. I'll go into the new enemy in the tunnels next chapter and I promise that it will be awesome and longer than this chapter, which is quite short. As usual, please review and enjoy the new chapter.

P.S. - If you get the fitting reference I made with the title chapter, you are awesome.

**Chapter 13: Opposing Forces**

**O-O-O**

The group still travelled down on the road, galloping slowly since they were not in a rush to run from the Slegs at the moment. Wendy knew this road well since she used it often to travel to Gravity Falls, avoiding the occasional Sleg convoy that passed through to deliver supplies or transferring citizens to the town and back, other than that, the Slegs never really established too much control of this road, mostly because the military was too busy waging military campaigns against the rebels under Xon's orders, not having the proper manpower nor time to establish a secure route on the road the group was on now.

"So Wendy, what's it like being a rebel?" Asked Mabel, wondering how her life is as a rebel. "Just kind of curious."

Wendy sighed heavily before responding. "It's not easy."

"I'd imagine going up against the Slegs is no easy task." Said Dipper, just as curious as Mabel.

"It's not just the Slegs, there's also the new lifestyle you have to adopt." Explained Wendy, making a grim look on her face. "You're always on edge for everything around you. Every day you have to watch for danger, every sound you hear, every sight you see, it makes you think that everything is out to get you. The Slegs don't help with that lifestyle, since they're always trying to hunt every one of us down, so we always have to be on the move unless we find a place that could be called home base."

"Like the base we're going to?" Inquired Dipper.

"Exactly." Answered Wendy. "But even then, it's still rough. I've seen a lot of people die in my eyes, in more ways than I care to imagine. Loss is very common in our struggle, and when we lose one of our own, we just have to deal with it and move on to continue the fight, never having enough time to properly mourn our dead before the military strikes us and kills more of our people."

"How many people died?" Asked Dipper, before immediately regretting his curiosity to ask the question.

"Too many." Answered Wendy softly, while Nate and Lee stayed silent. "Too many died."

Wendy then lowered her head solemnly, thinking back to the people she saw die in front of her own eyes, until Mabel broke the small silence in the group.

"Wendy I… I'm so sorry." Apologized Mabel. "What I said before about rebels being cool… I didn't mean to-

"It's okay." Said Wendy, lifting her head up and stopped thinking back to her darker thoughts as she looked at Dipper. "Just… try to ask questions that aren't so personal next time, okay?"

Dipper nodded at Wendy, sparing her from any more questions about the resistance, she looked like she didn't want to talk about it right now.

After a long silence in the group, Dipper decided that it was time to change the topic. "I uh- I want to say thanks, since I've never had the opportunity to say thanks before."

Wendy smiled at the kind compliment, which cheered her up a bit from the last conversation. "No problem. I wasn't going to leave you and everyone else behind."

"I know you wouldn't. Stan would have been proud of you." Said Dipper, making Wendy frown slightly out of guilt at the mention of Stan.

"Yeah, he would have." Agreed Wendy, still thinking back to her lie from before. "And I'm proud of you."

"For what?" Asked Dipper.

"For not giving up." Answered Wendy, turning her head to face Dipper. "A lot of people in your position would have given up after having a tragedy like that happen, but you're strong. We need more people like you."

"Oh wow. Uh, I don't what to say." Smiled Dipper, taken back by Wendy's words. "Thanks."

"No problem." Said Wendy, as the two stared into each other's eyes before Wendy broke away and looked ahead, while Dipper blushed without Wendy looking.

The rest of the group trotting on their horses close by the two noticed the whole scene play out, as Mabel began gossiping about the two with Nate, Lee, and Soos silently so Dipper and Wendy wouldn't hear.

"He likes her again." Said Mabel, pointing out Dipper's blushing. "My brother would never blush like that unless he likes her."

"Didn't Doctor Funtimes have a crush on her before?" Asked Lee.

"Yeah, but that was ten years ago. Now Dipper isn't twelve or so sweaty and awkward like he used to be." Said Mabel, before looking back at her brother briefly to see him nervously hold on to Wendy to not fall of the horse. "Okay, I take that back, he's still awkward."

"You really think they could actually, you know, get together?" Asked Soos, more concerned about Dipper with Wendy's tendency to lie.

"Absolutely. Love conquers all!" Exclaimed Mabel, making Dipper and Wendy glance over to Mabel.

"What are you talking about?" Asked Dipper curiously, while Lee decided to respond.

"We talking about you and-

"How awesome you are." Interrupted Nate. "Since you got this cool shotgun with you and all, Wendy should teach you how to shoot."

"Nate's right." Agreed Wendy. "If we ever run into anything dangerous, you'll need to know how to use that thing properly."

"Maybe you can teach him before we stop for the day?" Suggested Nate, which Wendy agreed with.

"Sure. You and I are going target practice tonight, Dip." Said Wendy, making Dipper glad to hear that. 'Thanks Nate."

"No problem." Replied Nate, while Mabel turned to Nate with an excited look on her face.

"Did you just set them up on a date?" Asked Mabel excitingly.

"Not intentionally. But this guy here gave me no choice." Answered Nate, nodding his head to Lee.

"It was all part of the plan." Said Lee, trying to come up with an excuse for his outburst.

"No it wasn't." Said Nate.

"Or was it?" Asked Lee, which made Nate shake his head as he faced Mabel.

"So how about you, Mabel? Anyone special in your life?" Asked Nate, which made Mabel smirk at the question.

"Always free for you, handsome." Joked Mabel, which made Nate chuckle at the joke.

"Thanks for the offer, but I'm taken." Said Nate, as Lee butted into the conversation.

"He's with Tambry now." Said Lee, as Mabel gasped with glee.

"Really? Congratulations." Said Mabel happily. "How is she anyways?"

"She's fine, though she's still sad about not seeing Robbie again." Said Nate, as he wondered something. "You haven't seen him in Gravity Falls have you?"

Mabel's smile quickly disappeared, remembering what happened to Robbie when his name was mentioned. "He's… he's dead. I tried to save him but there was nothing I could do."

Nate and Lee then frowned at the answer, not expecting to hear that form Mabel as Lee cursed to himself.

"Shit. What am I going to say to her?" Asked Nate, wondering how to break the news to Tambry.

"I'll tell her about Robbie, just in case she won't get mad at you." Offered Mabel, while thinking back to Robbie again and sighed heavily.

Before Nate could change the topic, the group could see a CSF APC driving straight towards them, which looked like it was in a rush.

"Off the road, now!" Shouted Wendy to the group, making the horses gallop into the woods nearby, hoping that the APC didn't spot them.

Luckily enough, the APC drove past the group, not even bothering to stop as it sped away as fast as it could. When it was gone, the group went back on the road to continue onward.

"That was a close one." Said Soos, relieved that CSF didn't spot them.

"Strange. It looked like they were in a rush." Said Dipper, suspicious of the APC. "You know anything about that, Wendy?"

"Not really." Answered Wendy, just as suspicious as Dipper. "I don't know why they would drive so fast."

The group just continued on the road, close to reaching the tunnel that they had to go through to be one step closer to leaving the region and away from CSF, not having a single clue as to what lies ahead of the group.

**O-O-O**

Miles away from the human fugitives is a military dropship flying low altitude along the same road the humans travelled on. The dropship is colored in forest green and is about thirty meters in length, with small wings on its sides that had a small engine on each wing, giving the dropship extra speed and mobility, along with two larger engines on the top back, while the rest of the rear was the troop bay door for soldiers to enter and exit, the cockpit of the dropship had two pilots, one in front while the other behind, the pilot who operated the vehicle was in front while the co-pilot behind operated the rotary gun on the front of the ship, the design of the ship was quite bulky since it was made for carrying troops while providing some air support with the gun in front, and despite the bulky appearance, the dropship still well as a troop transport, capable of holding at least twenty four troops in the troop bay, along with a few extra soldiers if there weren't enough seats.

The interior of the troop bay did have twenty four seats, making it able to effectively transport two squads of soldiers to whatever destination they needed to go, though only one squad of twelve soldiers were sitting in the transport, including the Sargent who was the squad leader, deciding to stand close by the troop bay door, facing his squad while holding on to a railing above him.

The Sleg soldiers had a more battle ready appearance than CSF, since every aspect about the soldiers was twice as better than CSF. The squad had eight Geckens and Five Guanians, the Sargent standing was one of the Guanians, and most were armed with standard issue assault rifles that were similar in appearance to the XM8 rifle, colored in a shade of black and equipped with a scope, while two Geckens and Guanians were equipped with semi-automatic combat shotguns, similar appearance to a Benelli M4, also colored in a shade of black and could hold about ten shells, and one Guanian and Gecken were armed with light machine guns, similar in appearance to a SAW machine gun, with a clip capacity of one hundred fifty bullets, and as backup side arms each soldier had a pistol, in similar appearance to a berretta, so the military had much deadlier weapons than CSF had, along with proper military training for combat situations.

The soldier's appearances were also different, instead of wearing ballistic vests, the soldiers had black military combat armor, covering the entire torso region and were made with stronger metals that were more durable and flexible, while wearing black tactical utility vests with a lighter shade of black, which mostly carried ammo and a combat knife, the military uniforms the soldiers wore is colored in forest green camo, along with the black combat armor, the soldiers also had black elbow and knee pads just as durable and flexible as the combat armor, with black combat boots, black tactical gloves and their ballistics helmets, which were colored in the same forest green camo as the uniform, the combat masks the soldiers wore were also made from the same material as the armor, they were thicker and had one nozzle on the mask where the mouth was for their vocoders, they were still equipped with a vocoder voice in the masks, but they did not hide the voices of the soldiers and made them sound who they were, and instead of CB radios, the radios were installed in the masks so there was no need of the small radios, and instead of tinted glass lens, the lens were colored blue and acted as some kind of tech googles that provided night vision for the darkness instead of being glass lens. Needless to say, the military were much more powerful than CSF.

Most of the squad had their masks off and just engaged in small talk with other squad mates or checked their gear for their mission, one particular Gecken with yellow scales had his mask in his hands, his rifle by his side as he just stared at his mask intently, stuck in his thoughts as to what was happening.

This was the Gecken's very first combat mission, he was straight out of boot camp and it was his very first day on Earth for his first day of military service, and already he had to go into a firefight. He was nervous, not expecting to fight on day one of being in service with the IAF, Imperial Armed Forces, and he had no desire to fight in the first place, especially not in the infantry, it wasn't his choice since he was conscripted into the army, only sixteen years old and yet his "glorious Empire" had no problems conscripting people his age, simple people who wanted to live normal lives but were forced into combat by their government.

The soldiers in his squad were all combat hardened and have been into multiple firefights before him, the only reason he was transferred to such a squad was because of a last minute decision by his superiors to put him in the squad, due to a sudden loss of a fellow squad mate yesterday by natural causes and the squad needed to be at full strength for their mission. He felt alone since he didn't really talk to any of them, nothing to really relate to since he was fresh meat, he stayed in his thoughts until a Gecken with rough olive green scales and his assault rifle on his side spoke to the young Gecken across.

"Hey kid." Said the Gecken across, getting the young Gecken's attention as he lifted his head to face him. "I haven't seen you before."

"I'm new." Said the young Gecken lowly.

"I can tell, smooth scales." Said the Gecken across, pointing out the young Gecken's scales. "You don't look like you've seen combat. First time?"

"Yeah." Said the young Gecken, somewhat surprised that someone would actually speak to him. "Just got out of boot camp."

Then a dark green scaled Guanian with a shotgun and shotgun bandolier across his chest next to the Gecken across by his left whistled surprisingly and spoke. "Bad day, huh? Sucks to be you."

"Cut the kid some slack, Brok." Said the Guanian next to the young Gecken's left, with his light machine gun in his arms and slightly lighter dark green scales, looking like he was making sure his gun wasn't jammed. "He didn't say anything to you."

"You always were a softy, Jorg." Scoffed Brok, as the Gecken next to him elbowed the Guanian at his arm.

"Can you two save the arguing after the mission? Then I can kick both your asses, corporal style." ordered the corporal, as the two Guanians gave each other annoyed gazes before the Gecken shotgunner talked to the young Gecken again. "Sorry about that. It's just been a while since we had anything to do. Our first mission in months."

"It's fine." Said the young Gecken understandably, not really much of a talker right now.

"What's your name, kid?" Asked the corporal.

"Private Tarkeen, sir." Replied the young Gecken. "My first name is Selick."

The corporal smiled as he extended his hand, while Selick extended his hand as well to shake it. "Corporal Veklarian. Just call me Vek for short."

After exchanging their greetings, Vek decided to introduce Selick to the rest of his squad.

"You've already seen Jorg and Brok." Said Vek, pointing to the two Guanians, with Jorg nodding to Selick while Brok just slightly motioned his head up. "Private Jorg is our machine gunner and provides all kinds of support for us, he also carries most of the ammo for the squad in case we run out."

"Just call me if you ever need extra bullets, I have plenty to spare for everyone. I'm a nice guy like that." Said Jorg humbly to Selick, while Brok just rolled his eyes.

"Sucking up to the rookie? Bah." Said Brok, as Vek pointed to the Guanian.

"Private Brok is a bit of a hardass, but he's really damn good at close quarter's combat, some of the best I've ever seen. He can take on twenty humans and live, which he did." Said Vek, introducing Brok as well as he looked at Selick intimidatingly.

"Basically, don't fuck with me." Said Brok as he loaded his shotgun with shotgun shells, while a Gecken with dark yellow scales next to Selick chuckled sardonically.

"A shame all the glory went to his head. Making him an even bigger asshole than he already is." Said the dark yellow Gecken, who also had a shotgun while Brok ignored the Gecken's quip.

"That's private Zazubarr. Usually he's a rifleman like you and me, but not for this mission. He's still pretty accurate though." Said Vek, as Zazubarr introduced himself to Selick.

"I insisted that I wanted to keep my rifle and play sniper, but I remembered that free speech is a myth. So I got fucked with that one." Said Zazubarr, as he loaded shotgun slugs, made for more long range targets, instead of shells in his shotgun. "Oh uh, call me Zaz for short, I hate long ass names like that."

Selick nodded in response as Vek introduced the last member of the squad, a Gecken with light green scales who looked like he was adjusting the frequency of the vocoder on his mask.

"The last member here is Private Meakrous. A rifleman like you, me and Zaz, although an extra benefit to him is that he's a techie so if anything is broken, he can fix it." Said Vek, introducing Meakrous as he nodded but was focused on fixing his mask.

"Meeko is also a HUGE nerd." Quipped Zaz, making Meeko lift his head to look at Zaz, with an annoyed expression.

"I'm a geek, not a nerd. There's actually a difference between the two." Corrected Meeko as he looked at Selick. "Really, there is."

"Told you he's a nerd." Said Zaz, as Meeko sighed and went back to repairing his mask.

"Welcome to the team." Said Vek, as Selick nodded respectively.

"Thank you, sir. I won't let you down." Said Selick, while Zaz decided to interrupt the conversation.

"Just don't die too quickly, kid." Quipped Zaz as he patted Selick's shoulder. "Stick with me and you'll live for at least three years on the hellhole, like me for example."

"I give him at least three seconds." Spoke up Brok. "Conscripts like him don't last too long."

"I'll manage." Responded Selick in a calm demeanor.

"We'll see." Said Brok as he loaded his shotgun, while Jorg decided to speak to Selick

"Don't worry about Brok, he'll warm up to you. He gave everyone else the same treatment." Assured Jorg, while Selick nodded in response and went back into his thoughts, staring back into his mask, thinking about what he was about to get into.

It was going to be one hell of a day.

**O-O-O**

Disclaimer: I don't own Gravity Falls, but I do own the Slegs and my Sleg characters, along with the new enemy I will introduce properly next chapter.


	15. Chapter 14

Authors note: Chapter ahoy, lads! I've been noticing that recently a BUNCH of people have stopped reading this story and while a bit discouraged at this, I'll still work on this story anyways, even if almost everyone loses interest except one person. Not a whole lot else except I'm going to dive into the new enemy in this chapter so sit back and enjoy, and as usual, please review to tell me what you think.

**Chapter 14: Them**

**O-O-O**

After the close call with the APC, The group arrived at the mountain side tunnel from the direction of the rushing APC, which still looked the same way that Wendy saw it earlier, although the only change was that she could see the tunnel inside was dark, which was strange since the tunnel lights should be on.

"The lights should be on here." Pointed out Wendy, squinting her eyes if she could see anything inside the darkness.

"Maybe the power ran out?" Guessed Soos.

"No way, those lights are meant to last for decades. Someone turned them off." Responded Wendy, as she grew even more suspicious about the tunnel. "Dipper, take out a gun. I don't like this."

Dipper complied with Wendy's order and took out his shotgun and pumped it, while he noticed that Mabel did not have a gun.

"Mabel." Called out Dipper to his sister, who turned to see her brother take out a pistol and throw it to her, catching it along with a pistol clip he threw as well. "Everyone should be armed."

Mabel frowned at the fact that she was holding a gun again, it reminded her about killing that CSF officer that started this whole ordeal, but she kept those thoughts to herself right now and turned off the safety, ready to defend her and everyone else in the group as she nodded to Dipper to say thanks.

"Keep close, move slowly, and check every corner possible." Ordered Wendy, as the group made the horses trot slowly inside the tunnel. "I have a bad feeling about this."

Before the group could be in the cover of the darkness of the tunnel, they could hear a faint whirring sound of engines from behind as the group turned around to see a forest green dropship heading their way in the distance, increasing more concern in the group for their safety.

"Shit! Military." Exclaimed Wendy, as the group turned back to advance further in the tunnel's darkness to avoid getting spotted. "Just fucking great."

"As if it couldn't get any worse." Commented Dipper.

The group slowly trotted their horses through the darkness, not being able to see much inside until Wendy used one free hand to take out flashlights while using the other hand to control the horse's reins, revealing the dark tunnel the same way she saw it before.

"Anything?" Asked Dipper quietly, wondering if there was anything off Wendy noticed in the tunnel.

"Nothing yet. Just keep looking." Answered Wendy, lighting the way with her flashlight.

The horses stuck close together, not going even a little bit further apart as they sped up a little so that the military behind wouldn't catch up, while lighting up dark corners of the long spacious tunnel to see nothing but empty and broken cars pushed aside, no sign of life to be found or heard, the only noises that could be heard were the slow trotting of hooves on concrete, and the tunnel seemed dead and empty, making the group paranoid of the vast silence.

"I'm scared." Said Mabel, getting more uncomfortable from the silence. "I'm really scared now."

"I don't think anyone is even here." Said Soos, hearing nothing from the tunnel. "It's not that bad."

"It's just that… it's creepy." Said Mabel as she checked her surroundings for anything creeping up on her. "I don't like it."

"We should just make the horses go faster to get away from the Slegs behind us." Suggested Soos.

"No way, Mabel's right. Something's off about this place." Argued Wendy. "I don't know what it is, but the last time I came through here was nothing like this."

"So what if some lights are off? Maybe this tunnel just had really shitty lights." Responded Lee, not buying into the fright factor.

"Forget it. We're going slow and steady and that's that." Said Wendy sternly, not wanting to argue further about the lights.

The group then stumbled upon a grizzly scene that made them stop in their tracks and stare in shock at what they saw, a convoy of three CSF transports, abandoned and damaged in every way possible, along with bullet casings and blood spread out in the ground.

"What the hell?" Said Nate, surprised at seeing a CSF convoy abandoned and damaged in the middle of the tunnel. "What happened here?"

"It looks like CSF got attacked here." Said Dipper lowly, feeling disturbed at seeing the large amounts of blood splattered all over the convoy's vicinity. "Goddamn."

The group was trotting past the vehicles, observing the old firefight and noticed very strange things about it, such as the claw marks on the transports and the fact that there were no bodies to be found. Soos and the twins were disturbed about the scene, while Nate, Lee, and Wendy were more frightful about the scene, making guesses as to who, or what, attacked the convoy.

"Soos. Go ahead to the last truck. See if there's anything ahead." Ordered Wendy, as Soos complied and made the horse trot forward ahead of the group.

"There should be bodies here." Pointed out Dipper, noticing a lack of bodies in the scene, while Wendy eyed a particular blood splatter in front.

Wendy's eyes opened wide in fear at the blood, it was not just red but green as well, a mixture of two different colors as if they were one, and she knew that there was only one kind of creature that had that kind of blood.

"Guys?" Said Soos, calling from ahead. "We found something."

The group hurried forward, making the horses trot ahead until they reached Soos and Mabel. Soos motioned his head next to the ground to show what looked like a mutilated corpse of a CSF Sleg, most of its flesh was torn apart, and the Sleg's guts were chewed and strewn across the ground, its face torn to shreds and chewed on so badly that part of its face was nothing but bone, and that was only the upper half of the Sleg's body, for the lower half was completely gone.

"Oh God." Said Dipper softly, shocked at the scene while Nate and Lee tried looking away, but Wendy just shook her head fearfully, now knowing for sure what did all this.

"Fuck. Not them." Said Wendy fearfully, and it didn't help that from the look of the corpse it looked like the Sleg died only a few hours ago.

"Them?" Asked Dipper, able to her Wendy's mumbling as she looked at Dipper fearfully.

"We need to get out of here." Said Wendy to the group, not wanting to stay in this tunnel any longer, making the horse trot fast ahead of the group who followed behind, and not noticing a small creature crawl on top of the truck and jump on Soos's horse saddle behind Mabel. "Hurry before-

"AHHHHHHHH!"

The whole group was alert now, turning behind to see Soos 's horse neigh wildly out of fear, but the panicked scream came from Mabel, who fell off the horse after something jumped on her head, and was now struggling to get something off her.

"MABEL!" Exclaimed Dipper, immediately getting off the horse with Wendy telling everyone to watch the horses, as she ran to Mabel's aid with Dipper.

"Get this thing off me!" Shouted Mabel for help, using both her hands to hold on to some kind of plump pale worm creature.

The creature was surprisingly strong for such a small thing, and it was hard to keep a grip on it because Mabel's hands kept slipping, the creature felt slippery and slimy which made it easier for it to get closer to Mabel's face and once it was close enough, several fleshy red tendrils came out of a slit like mouth and tried to latch onto her face, making Mabel disgusted and horrified at the sight of the tendrils all over her face, closing her eyes to prevent the tendrils from going inside them.

"Hold on!" Shouted Dipper, reaching his sister as he and Wendy grabbed onto the creature to pull it off Mabel.

The creature persisted however, and managed to get a few tendrils to open Mabel's mouth and struggled to go forward to enter inside the girl. Dipper and Wendy pulled as hard as they could to get the creature off, not making it easy for the two since the tendrils stuck on tightly to Mabel's face, with each tug from Dipper and Wendy making Mabel feel like her skin was about to come off. With one final pull, the creature came off of Mabel, and was thrown down hard on the concrete ground, as it screeched and tried to crawl away from the group, but Wendy managed to run up to the worm creature and stomp on it with her boot, making a squeamish squishing sound and died instantly from the forceful stomp, getting green blood and guts all over the ground and some on the bottom of Wendy's boot, who was disgusted at the sight as she scraped off the guts on the ground.

"Mabel? Are you okay?" Asked Dipper, concerned about Mabel's safety as he helped her get up from the ground.

"I'm fine." Answered Mabel, calming her brother down. "I just feel like throwing up breakfast."

Dipper picked up his shotgun and the pistol Mabel dropped, giving the pistol to Mabel while Wendy got her flashlight out to observe what she had just killed, the smashed remains of some kind of worm creature.

"Fuck." Cursed Wendy to herself, realizing that her fears came true. "Worms."

The group could then hear bloodcurdling screeches from the distance, silencing the group as they heard the screeches echo throughout the tunnel. Wendy pointed her flashlight at the direction of the noise, but then it began flickering on and off until the batteries burned out, leaving the group in the dark. This made Lee, who was ahead of the group to control the horse left behind by Wendy and Dipper, search his vest for a flare and light it up to illuminate the surrounding darkness, giving the group a small area of vision around them as they continued to hear bloodcurdling screeches, getting closer with each passing second.

Then Nate light up a flare he had in his vest, and tossed it at the direction to where they heard the screeches to get a better view of what was there, revealing a growling and ravenous horde of human and Sleg figures, all with pale skin and bloodstained clothing, drooling fresh blood and saliva, with more fresh blood dripping from their claws, as they kept staring at their new prey with bloodshot eyes, along with several of the worm creatures around them, having every intent to slaughter their potential victims in front.

"RUN!" Shouted Wendy, as they sprinted their way back from where they came from, with Mabel managing to get a ride from Soos on back of one horse while Nate picked up Dipper and Wendy reached the horse all the way in front with Lee, as they galloped on horseback away from the charging horde, who wanted nothing more than to slash them apart with their claws and consume their flesh, while the worms quickly kept pace with their horde of strange human and Sleg allies by shooting out their tendrils from their bodies and latching onto their charging horde's backs as carriers, or crawled above the tunnel walls and used their tendrils to latch onto the celling, and swung forward above the ground like vines to keep up with their horde and attack from above.

"What the fuck are those things!" Exclaimed Dipper, looking back from his horse to see the charging horde keeping up with them, while Nate could only answer that question in what he thought was fitting for them.

"Hell."

**O-O-O**

Meanwhile, a few minutes before the worm incident, the dropship that was heading toward the tunnel was getting close to its destination and was now slowing down and finding a good place to land.

"LZ is close now. ETA two minutes." Announced the pilot to the troops, using a speaker device implemented on the ship for everyone to hear.

"Gear up, men. We're getting close now." Ordered Vek to his team, who complied with his orders as they prepared whatever gear they had brought with them for their mission.

The announcement got Selick out of his thoughts as he checked his gear to make sure he had everything he needed, while everyone else finished what they were doing, such as Meeko managing to fix his mask or Brok finishing with loading his shotgun, everyone on the ship was prepared for whatever they had to do, except Selick.

He was prepared in the sense that he had all his gear checked out and was ready for the mission physically, but not mentally. He had all kinds of mixed feelings about what was happening, but most of all, he was scared, scared that he would die as soon as they landed, not knowing what to expect from touching down on the ground. Vek noticed Sleick's nervousness from across, the rookie's hands were shaking as he held on to his rifle, his pupils were dilating in his green eyes, and was breathing in and out to calm himself down. Although everyone was a soldier here, he couldn't help but feel sorry for Selick, he may have been a nervous rookie like so many others that Vek had saw before, but even though Selick never told Vek his age, he knew he was only a kid just by the smooth scales alone, so he felt pity for someone so young in the army.

"You alright, kid?" Asked Vek, getting Selick's attention as he nervously looked at Vek.

"Not really." Answered Selick, not looking forward to the mission at hand.

"Rookies always get nervous on their first combat mission." Said Vek, trying to encourage Selick. "I felt the same as you did on my first mission, hell, I almost shit my pants when I hit the ground."

Selick then chuckled at the response. "Really?"

"Really. Just stick with us and shiting your pants won't even cross your mind." Said Vek, smiling at the fact that he cheered up Selick, all you need is a little laugh to feel better in a situation like this, that's how the army was.

"What crosses my mind is that we can kill something." Said Brok, relived he didn't have to wait any longer. "It's been a while."

"We don't even know what we're going to kill. Command sent us out in a rush for this mission." Said Jorg, getting his combat pack that was colored in forest green camo from under his seat, which had the extra ammo for his team.

"Then we should hear from the Sargent soon." Said Zaz, as he began predicting when he would speak. "In fact, we'll get the briefing right about…now."

"Alright men! Listen up!" Exclaimed the Sargent by the troop bay door, getting his squad's attention to give a short briefing about their mission. "I know that we were originally assigned to search the region for the human fugitives from yesterday, but command gave us a new objective after receiving reports from CSF about losing one of their teams to unknown reasons."

The soldiers were not too thrilled about hearing about CSF. They never liked CSF ever since they were first founded, always taking orders from government officials higher up for their own selfish purposes instead of the sake of others, they saw them as nothing more than brainwashed drones that were more machine than Sleg, which in some ways is true.

"They said that they sent a team to investigate the disappearance of a convoy in a tunnel by the more mountainous areas of the region, but only the driver came back while the rest of the team was reported to be MIA." Continued the Sargent, peeking the interest of the soldiers even more. "The reports also say that the driver said he heard bloodcurdling screams along with the screams of his team before leaving the area, so we have reason to believe that there's only one kind of force that could do that, Gene Worms."

The soldiers then groaned or exclaimed, concerned about hearing the possibility of Gene worms.

"Fuck. Anything but worms." Said Zaz worryingly, while Selick just stayed silent, shaking his head out of hearing those two words.

Selick knew the basic concepts of these horrifying creatures. Before he was conscripted in the army, he learned about the Gene Worms briefly in his history and science classes in high school before getting pulled out for military service, he learned that the Gene Worms were old creatures that existed thousands of years ago and have always been a mortal enemy of Sleg kind, even his most ancient ancestors fought them with rocks and sticks, he learned about their impact in his people's history, with all of the mass chaos and destruction they could spread with just one of them, suddenly producing hundreds of thousands of worms at a time to decimate entire cities unprepared for the worms, and

Selick could still remember the image of a Gene Worm in his old biology textbook, they were ugly and frightful creatures, plump and slimy parasites with no eyes yet they could sense you, the worms could grow to be ten inches long, they had pale white flesh with short blood red insect like legs, four on each side of their body to use to crawl, they also had four short blood red spines across the top of their bodies, they had two inch mandible like pincers on the sides of their mouth, the mouth itself was nothing more than a horizontal slit that hid several crimson red tendrils that the worms would use for various purposes.

While Sleick never got too far into the lesson about the Gene worm's biology, he knew well enough from school and stories from military veterans about how dangerous these worms were.

"It's only a guess that it's Gene Worms, but it's a very likely one, and we all know how we feel about the worms, but we have orders to change our primary objective to searching for the possible worm infestation and rooting it out. However, that doesn't mean we don't stop looking for the fugitives as our primary objective either." Continued the Sargent. "CSF reports that the same fugitives we're searching for are near where we're going, so it's most likely that they went into the tunnel as well, which means we have two primary objectives to follow through. Any questions before we land?"

Meeko then raised his hand to ask a question, which the Sargent promptly pointed at to get his question. "With all due respect sir, why is command sending us to wipe out a possible Gene Worm infestation? Shouldn't they send in more specialized units like a quarantine team?"

"A Q-team was sent our way to provide back up, but we are under very strict orders by governor Xon to find the fugitives immediately, Xon is technically our supreme commander because of his position, so we don't get the luxury of waiting for back up under his command, so if we have to rush in, we rush in." Answered the Sargent, much to the dismay of his men. "Anything else?"

Zaz also raised his hand for question and began to speak. "I got one. Why is Xon such a baby bitch about these humans? They're just some poor bastards trying to live."

"We have our orders, private Zazubarr. Whether we like them or not, we have to follow them. You were briefed before about Xon's orders a few days ago, so save your criticism about Xon for later." Answered the Sargent, while Zaz was not satisfied with his answer.

The dropship eventually arrived by the tunnel, slowing down completely as it began slowly descend onto the clear road by the tunnel to unload its troops, while the pilot made another announcement.

"We are at the LZ. Landing in ETA thirty seconds." Announced the pilot.

"Get ready to move out!" Ordered the Sargent, putting on his combat mask while all the other soldiers did the same.

The soldiers put on their masks, cocked their guns and were ready to move out, standing up in double column formations inside, ready to go out in a few seconds. The large door ten opened downward, providing a way down to the ground as the dropship landed on the concrete of the road, and the Sargent moved out with all other soldiers outside, checking their perimeters with their loaded guns as they moved inside the tunnel, spreading out in two teams with Vek's team on the right while the Sargent's team on the left, turning on their night vision in their masks to see through the darkness while the dropship outside lifted off and left the soldiers to do their duty, cautiously and slowly advancing inside the dark tunnel.

"Okay, this place give me the creeps." Said Zaz, already not liking the dark tunnel.

"Aww. That's so cute. Do you want your blankie too?" Mocked Brok.

"I actually wouldn't mind because they're really comfy." Responded Zaz, somewhat agreeing with Brok. "But the point is that I don't like this place."

"I have to agree with Zaz on this, something is definitely off." Agreed Meeko, getting the same feeling. "CSF convoys don't just disappear."

"What do you think, boss?" Asked Zaz to Vek. "Rebels or worms?"

"Just keep moving and we'll find out." Answered Vek, as the Sleg soldiers kept moving forward. "But it's probably worms."

"It better be worms. The more of them dead, the better." Said Brok, eager to kill the worms. "Plus I like enemies that put up a fight."

"I hope it's nothing. Then we can just go back, and relax, and not kill things for once." Said Jorg, hoping that this whole search is null and void. "There's more to military life than shooting things."

"You're right. There's more to the military than shooting things." Agreed Brok. "There's also stabbing them and breaking bones with your bare hands, and you don't have to kill to do that."

"No, that's not what I-

Before Jorg could finish his sentence, the soldiers could hear a scream from ahead the tunnel, but it didn't sound as bloodcurdling as they thought. The soldiers stopped in their tracks and proceeded to move forward slowly just in case if it was a threat ahead.

"That didn't sound good." Commented Selick, worried that it was Gene Worms.

"Relax, rookie. That's not worms." Assured Zaz, losing worry about it being worms. "They sound a lot scarier than that."

"I think that was a person." Guessed Meeko. "But the scream sounded like it was… afraid."

"Afraid of what?" Asked Selick.

Then the soldiers could hear the bloodcurdling screeches that they did not want to hear, as they got ready to face their old foe.

"Afraid of that." Said Vek, now knowing that it truly was Gene Worms that possibly killed off the convoy along with the investigating CSF team.

"Move in! Now!" Ordered the Sargent, signaling his squad to run forward to deal with the Gene Worm threat.

As the soldiers moved in, they stopped when their Sargent signaled them to stop in place, as they took aim forward and could hear the clopping of horses coming towards them along with the bloodcurdling screeches. The Slegs then got into more defensive positions, using the cars around to set up covering positions and aimed their guns to whatever would come towards them. The Sargent told his troops to hold their fire and would open fire on his command, as they saw four horses galloping towards their positions, along with the fugitives that they were looking for on horseback.

"Sir, requesting permission to fire. Incoming targets are part of our main objective." Asked Vek, wanting to get this whole mission over with for the safety of his men.

"Negative. Both the fugitives and worms are our priority. Wait for the worms first and then open fire, we can take them all out at once." Answered the Sargent, as the soldiers held their fire much to their displeasure.

The bloodcurdling screeches got closer and closer until the soldiers could now see the charging horde of human, Sleg, and worms, which numbered in the dozens, possibly more than a hundred. While most of the Slegs were scared but still firm on their triggers, Selick could help himself but shake in fear, he's always heard the stories and seen images in his biology textbook of the Gene Worm hordes, even when he was a child he was told fairytales of the worms by his parents with brave knights slaying them, but he never thought he would see the horrifying beasts up close and believe those fairytales, as he prepared for a battle that he would never forget when the Sargent gave the order.

"OPEN FIRE!"

**O-O-O**

Disclaimer: I do not own Gravity Falls, but I do own the Slegs, my Sleg characters, and the Gene Worms.


	16. Chapter 15

Authors note: Got the next chapter up now. I was originally going to make this fight seem bad ass, but I did the same thing with the motel fight and it came out as more brutal and fucked up than awesome when I wrote it out, especially since the Gene Worms can be pretty damn violent. If you want this fight to be cooler, go listen to a certain Half Life 2 ost called "Self Destruction", I think it fits the situation in the tunnel. Other than that, enjoy the new chapter.

**Chapter 15: Crossfire**

**O-O-O**

The soldiers opened fire on the crowd in front, making the human group gallop their horses to cover from the hail of bullets, luckily for them, the soldiers were getting more hits on the Gene Worms and their horde rather than them, but although they were alive, the horses were not, since they took the bullets for the humans as they fell over in pain from the mass hail of bullets, or from the charging horde that managed to take down the horses to bit and tear them apart, making the fallen humans crawl quickly to the sides of the road to the broken cars for cover, separating the group as the twins, Soos, and Nate were on the left side of the road while Wendy and Lee were further behind on the left, stuck due to the hail of bullets by the Sleg troops and the charging Gene Worm horde.

It was more fortunate for the humans that the charging horde concentrated their focus on the Sleg soldiers instead of them, determining them to be the greater threat as they screeched and screamed while they charged, their bodies hitting the ground dead as bullets pierced through their skulls, while the Gene Worms themselves were blown away in bloody green messes as the impact of the bullets were enough to kill them, the humans were just caught in a cross fire, with one side of Slegs gunning down anyone in their way, while the horde on the other just kept running as fast as they could, covering the whole road as they leaped over the cars, just missing the humans hiding in cover.

"FUCK THEM UP!" Shouted Zaz, blasting open large holes in the horde members, combinations of green and red blood splattered across the ground and cars.

"How many are there?!" Exclaimed Meeko, wanting the horde to end their charge while getting a few good shots to one of the charging Slegs.

"Too fucking many!" Answered Jorg, spraying as many bullets as possible at the horde to slow their advance.

While the Slegs kept holding their ground, the humans were still stuck in cover, unable to move from the hails of gunfire.

"Oh my god! I can't do this!" Shouted Mabel, now panicking from the mass chaos of gunfire, screams, and dead bodies falling down as she covered her ears. "I'm fucking terrified!"

Dipper held his sister close to him, trying to calm her down while the firefight went on, but it didn't help when one body of a human horde victim fell dead, its body crashing into a car window close to the twins as Mabel screamed in terror, as the body twitched and out came one of the Gene Worms from the corpse's head, bursting out from its ear and crawled down to the twins, while Soos grabbed the worm and flung it towards the Slegs, who easily shot the worm dead.

"We got to get the fuck out of here!" Exclaimed Dipper to Nate.

"Wait until they stop shooting! Then we run back!" Answered Nate.

"Are you crazy!?" Exclaimed Soos, taking out his gun to defend the group.

"Any other ideas!?" Exclaimed Nate, readying his AK-47 for defense as well.

It was a suicide mission in every way, the group can't run towards the soldiers or else they would get shot, and running back meant they could get attacked by a few Gene Worms who might decide to go after them instead, and waiting in cover to see who would win is not a good idea either, since either side would kill them. So the group had to take their chances to run back towards to horde to Wendy and Lee, who were now defending themselves from some Gene Worms who decided to go after them instead.

Wendy and Lee were thankful that not many worms went after them, as Wendy had an easy time chopping up any worm that got too close to her and Lee, who got out his rifle in case something bigger came their way, while looking above him in shock to see Gene Worms swinging across the ceiling.

"Wendy!" Exclaimed lee, motioning Wendy to look up and see the Gene Worms above.

"Just don't shoot them! We don't need any more on our ass!" Exclaimed Wendy, as another Gene Worm on ground leaped towards her head, only for her to hit the worm with her hatchet blade and almost chopped its body in half, as it squirmed on the ground dying from the fatal wound.

The gunfire then subsided, for many of the Sleg soldiers had to reload, giving the humans the chance to run from out of cover and towards the horde, avoiding any of the charging horde who had more of a desire to kill the Slegs, which was quite strange for the Gene Worms to ignore anything in their path, while a few Slegs still opened fire on the horde, the lack of fire from the rest of the soldiers only helped the horde get closer to the Slegs for by the time they reloaded, the soldiers knew they had to make every shot count or risk getting mauled, while failing to notice the Gene Worms from above as the worms plunged down onto the Slegs, ignoring the humans who were far beyond reach as they managed to successfully run away from the crossfire.

"Look out!" Shouted Vek, warning everyone about the dropping worms.

While most of the soldiers reacted quickly to step back while moving back from their defensive positions, three Slegs failed to step away in time as the worms swarmed around their bodies, piercing through their clothing with their pincers as the unfortunate soldiers tried shaking them off, but to no avail as the worms crawled under their clothing, making the soldiers panic while failing to notice the horde charging at them, with one soldiers getting his throat ripped off by their sharp teeth, another had his body slashed apart in gory fashion by their claws, the last victim had his arms torn off from his body, as he screamed in pain from the tear until eventually getting his head torn off from the brute strength of a Guanian horde member, who then threw the head at the direction of the soldiers who were backing up, frightening Selick who was the closest to the thrown head.

"Three men down! Back up! Back up!" Ordered the Sargent, as the Slegs moved backwards while shooting, gunning down anyone getting to close to them as he shot the Guanian who threw the head in his head respectively.

"Come on, you slimy fucks! Come on!" Shouted Brok, taunting the horde as he shot each one running towards him, blowing off limbs in bloody fashion until he ran out of shells, but that wouldn't be a problem for Brok as he began engaging the horde in melee combat. "Come at me!"

Brok had two of the horde members come at him, one human and the other Gecken, screaming off the top of their lungs as they readied their claws to gut him, but Brok managed to hit the human in the head by swinging his shotgun like a baseball bat, cracking open its skull while the Gecken grabbed his gun, throwing it on the ground as Brok quickly pulled out his combat knife and stabbed the Gecken in the head, killing it instantly as Brok prepared for more of the horde to take on and let out a mighty roar of bloodlust.

The rest of the soldiers kept their fire, thinning the horde down with each shot but not without casualties, every few shots that missed, a soldier would die, as a Guanian soldier too close to a human horde member swiped its claws at the soldier's lower torso, easily piercing through the combat armor as it sliced open the soldier's stomach as he groaned in pain, falling down to his side as he tried holding in his intestines from spilling out, while another poor Gecken victim close behind was tackled down to the ground, and had a Guanian horde member smash his head open, crushing it into a bloody mess while Zaz shot too little, too late to save the poor soldier.

"Fuck! We lost almost half our guys!" Said Zaz, as the Guanian horde member tried mauling Zaz, only for the soldier to dodge the Guaninan and knock him down, blasting its head open with the last slug in his shotgun.

"Just keep firing! They're almost gone!" Ordered Vek, noticing that there were not many horde members left to kill while the Gene Worms started to crawl away from the soldiers, though to no avail as Brok managed to get his gun back and gun down any Gene Worm crawling away from ahead of the squad.

Selick was not too far behind from Brok, as one of the horde members, a human, tackled Selick down who did not expect one of the creatures to get him from the side as he dropped his gun held the horde member away from him, struggling to kick him off while reaching for his knife, as the horde member screamed something audible for Selick to understand, which terrified the young Gecken even more. It would have been over for Selick if Vek did not come to save him, as he kicked away the human horde member off of Selick and put a few bullets in his skull, splattering meat chunks on the ground as he helped Selick up.

"You okay, kid?" Asked Vek, concerned for the rookie, who nodded in response as he gave the rookie his assault rifle from the ground. "Be careful next time, won't you?"

"Yes, sir." Said Selick, out of breath as he looked around the aftermath of the chaos, as the last of the surviving Gene Worms were killed.

All Selick could see was the bloody aftermath of the fight. Several Gene Worms busted apart from gunfire, splattering green blood and guts while the horde members spilled their green and red blood on the ground, their bodies riddled with bullets, their heads either shot or blown apart by shotguns, and some limbs scattered across the ground, while his fellow soldiers who had fallen looked like they suffered worse fates, and looked away quickly so he would not see their mangled and mutilated bodies. They may have not been on his team, but he still felt bad that they died, as he leaned against a car and took off his mask, and covered his face as he tried to calm himself from the bloody aftermath.

"Rookie?" Said Vek, noticing Selick's displeasure of the whole situation, while the Sargent ordered the rest of his squad to make sure there were no Gene Worms left.

"What the fuck was this?" Said Selick softly, trying to comprehend what just happened.

"A bloodbath." Answered Vek. "It's not pretty, I know. But this kind of thing happens when we deal with Gene Worms."

Selick just shook his head, putting his rifle on the trunk of the car as he wiped his hands across his face to calm down, while staring at one of the dead horde members. "What happened to them?"

"Gene Worms can do nasty things to a person." Said Brok, his armor covered in the blood of the creatures, coming back from chasing down the rest of the worms. "All they need to do is get in your brain, and you're gone."

Selick uncovered his hand to face Brok. "But I heard them scream."

"They always scream." Said Brok, not understanding what Selick meant by that.

"But they were screaming in pain." Said Selick, trying to keep his composure. "I swear to the gods, the one that tackled me down. I heard him scream "kill me, please." I don't think they really are gone."

The soldiers just stayed silent, as the rest of Vek's team along with the Sargent walked over to the rest, while checking the dead bodies for any sign of Gene Worms, putting bullets into each body to make sure that Gene Worms were not inside.

"Where's the rest of them?" Asked the Sargent to Vek, talking about the other team.

"Dead. Their bodies are all over the place. About six casualties." Said Vek morbidly, while Zaz cursed to himself from hearing that.

"Six? I only see five" Said the Sargent, confused if the casualty number was right before Vek pointed at a pile of torn bloody chunks in the distance.

"You see that? That was a soldier we didn't notice die in the front, or at least what's left of him." Said Vek, making the Sargent almost gag in disgust. "Poor bastard never had a chance."

"By the gods." Said Selick, briefly seeing the bloody pile before turning away.

"And the humans?" Asked the Sargent, which touched a nerve on Zaz. "Any sign of them?"

"No sir, we-

"The humans? We just lost six men to these fuckers and you want to know about the humans!?" Interrupted Zaz, angry at the Sargent's question. "Fuck the humans!"

"Private. Stand down now." Said the Sargent sternly.

"No fucking way I'm standing down!" Shouted Zaz angrily. "If we just waited for the Q-team, those men wouldn't have died!"

"We had strict orders to move in immediately. Either you stand down now, or you'll be court martialed for insubordination." Threatened the Sargent, who then turned to Vek. "Corporal. Take two men with you to sweep the area for Gene Worms, the rest of you stay put until the Q-team arrives in two minutes."

The Sargent then walked away to the tunnel entrance to wait for the Q-team, while Vek patted Selick on his shoulders to assure him that everything was fine now, as he walked away to check the dead bodies with Brok and Jorg, while Meeko leaned on the car next to Selick, as Zaz took his rage out on a dead Gene Worm nearby by stomping it, furious at the chaos they caused.

"This isn't the first time this happened." Said Meeko grimly to Selick, who faced Meeko with a clearly traumatized look. "We've been sent to this kind of situation before and lost a lot of people that way."

"Do you ever get used to it?" Asked Selick.

"Everyone has their own ways of dealing with these situations. Zaz usually vents his anger on things." Said Meeko, pointing to Zaz who finished stomping on the worm to oblivion and panted heavily. "Others just keep to themselves like me. But no matter how many times we do this, we never do get used to it. We just… deal with it and move on."

Selick covered his face again, close to the brink of crying as Meeko patted on Selick's shoulder to comfort the young Gecken.

While the few minutes had passed, Vek and his two teammates returned from their sweep at the same time the Sargent came back to the tunnel, this time with the Q-team that should have been there earlier. The Q-team soldiers had the same outfits as the regular soldiers, but had pure white uniforms instead of forest green camo and were thicker than ordinary clothing, due to the uniform being some kind of special hazmat suit of sorts, and they also lacked helmets while having a more heavily armored gas mask with a green lens and did not have a tactical vest, but other than that, they looked similar. They were also equipped with some kind of flamethrowers attached to twin fuel tanks on their backs, ready to initiate the decontamination procedure of the area to purge the rest of the Gene Worms, while taking no risks of infection and to burn EVERY single body they found.

Before they began burning the area, Jorg suggested that the best way to honor the fallen soldiers was to take their dog tags before leaving so that they would know who had fallen, as the rest of the soldiers did just that before the Q-team burned the bodies, while rooting out any other surviving Gene Worm from the tunnel as the surviving soldiers watched from behind and went back to their dropship for wherever they needed to go, staying silent on the whole trip.

Today was not a good day.

**O-O-O**

While the Slegs were busy cleaning up, the humans regrouped with each other as they kept running to the other side of the tunnel, without any horses since they were killed in the firefight, and were running because there were still a few Gene Worms and a few infected horde members running after them. Luckily, the group managed to reach the other side and exit the dark tunnel, back into the light of day as the Gene Worm horde stopped right outside the tunnel, as they growled and hissed at the humans, who just stared at them in shock and terror, until the creatures turned away from them and retreated back into their tunnel.

"Oh my god." Said Dipper, panting heavily as he turned to face Wendy. "What the fuck were those things?"

"Gene Worms." Said Wendy venomously. "Parasites if you couldn't tell. But to everyone else… they're monsters."

"Why didn't they attack us now?" Asked Soos, confused as to why the Gene Worms went back to the tunnel.

"Territory." Answered Wendy. "That tunnel might their territory now."

While everyone caught their breath, Mabel sat down on the ground and began crying her eyes out from the terror she witnessed, as Dipper went over to her to calm her down.

"Mabel?" Asked Dipper, concerned about Mabel's wellbeing.

"Did- did you hear them?" Asked Mabel, wheezing in between while tears streaked down her face. "They were in pain. So much pain."

"Mabel, they were-

"I know what I heard!" Shouted Mabel at her brother, mad at him for not believing her. "They were doing horrible things to those Slegs, and they hated it, they hated it so much and were screaming in pain."

Dipper then helped Mabel up, while Wendy cursed to herself at what happened.

"It's gonna be tougher to get back to base now." Pointed out Wendy. "The horses back there had most of our supplies."

"We can still make it, right?" Asked Dipper, not wanting hope to be lost forever.

"We can." Said Wendy, assuring hope was not lost. "We just need to survive the old fashioned way."

The group then faced the direction of the road they were on and continued onward, now facing a tougher challenge to move ahead and recover from the Gene Worm attack.

"We're not going to see them again, are we?" Asked Soos.

Wendy just stayed silent, not answering Soos's question as Mabel cried silently to herself, with Dipper putting an arm around her for comfort as the group walked, even more cautious of their surroundings since they lost almost everything they had except what was on them.

All that was left was hope.

**O-O-O**

Disclaimer: I do not own Gravity Falls, but I do own the Slegs, my Sleg characters, and the Gene Worms.


End file.
